
Class 



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Book . A% 



THE BEGINNINGS 



OF 



ENGLISH UTILITARIANISM 



A THESIS ACCEPTED BY THE FACULTY OF CORNELL 

UNIVERSITY FOR THE DEGREE OF 

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY 

MAY, 1894 



BY 



ERNEST ALBEE, A.B. 

Instructor in the Sage School of Philosophy, Cornell University 



*•*» 



BOSTON 

GINN & COMPANY 

1897 



I 



THE BEGINNINGS 



OF 



ENGLISH UTILITARIANISM 



A THESIS ACCEPTED BY THE FACULTY OF CORNELL 

UNIVERSITY FOR THE DEGREE OF 

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY 

MAY, 1894 



BY 



ERNEST ALBEE, A.B. 

Instructor in the Sage School of Philosophy, Cornell University 



&K< 



BOSTON 
GINN & COMPANY 

(E&e atjmaettm press 
1897 



y \ 



Cornell Uuiv, Lio. Sxchang 
Mart j i$utf 



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PREFACE. 



Perhaps no form of history is more interesting than that 
which has received the somewhat indefinite, because very 
general name, — History of Philosophy. It is evident that 
we may understand the field of investigation thus indicated in 
a broader or in a narrower sense ; and it is hardly necessary 
to remark that the accredited historians of Philosophy have 
actually differed more or less in their opinions as to the ground 
to be covered. Nobody would deny that the History of Ethics 
is a very essential part of the History of Philosophy, and, so 
far as ethical theories have formed an organic part of the 
general systems of ancient and modern philosophers, they may 
be said to have received due recognition at the hands of the 
historian. Lac, as the general tendency of English thought has 
been (or for a long time was) practical rather than speculative, 
it has happened, not unfortunately, that the progress of ethical 
theory in England has, on the whole, been less involved with the 
rise and decadence of definite systems of metaphysic than has 
been the case on the continent. Problems belonging distinctly 
to Ethics have for the most part been discussed on their own 
merits — except, of course, where theological issues have been 
raised. If English writers have not always put forth the 
profoundest theories regarding the nature and meaning of 
morality, they have at least done inestimable service in the way 
of clear thinking and consistent reasoning. 

Now the result of this comparatively non-metaphysical char- 
acter of English Ethics is tha^ it has by no means taken its true 
place in the general History of Philosophy. Properly speak- 
ing, we have no history of English Ethics. Dr. Whewell, 
indeed, published in 1852 his Lectures on the History of Moral 
Philosophy in England ; but this book was hardly calculated 



iv PREFACE. 

to serve more than a temporary purpose. It everywhere shows 
marks of haste, as might perhaps be expected from its mode of 
composition, and the writer is so concerned to refute theories 
incompatible with his own, that his expositions, even aside from 
their necessary brevity, are generally unsatisfactory and some- 
times quite misleading. A very different book is Professor 
Sidgwick's Outlines of the History of Ethics for English 
Readers, first published in 1886. This is all that a mere 
'outline' could very well be; but, when it is considered that 
Chapter IV of this little volume, on " Modern, Chiefly English, 
Ethics," is only about one hundred pages long, it will readily 
be seen that it does not by any means pretend to be an adequate 
history of the subject. Other ' outlines ' might be mentioned, 
such as the very excellent one contained in Professor Wundt's 
Ethik ; but none of these really supply, or pretend to supply, 
a need which we doubtless all feel. 

Since, then, we have no adequate history of English Ethics, 
the attempt has been made in the following chapters to cover 
a small fraction of the ground by tracing the rise of Utilitarian- 
ism in England. No one of the writers considered — not even 
Hume — is individually of such importance for English Ethics 
as Bishop Butler; but, taken as a whole, Utilitarianism may 
fairly be regarded as England's most characteristic, if not most 
important, contribution to the development of ethical theory. 
This being the case, its early history certainly deserves careful 
and somewhat extended treatment. The writer hopes that, 
whatever may be the shortcomings of the following historical 
sketch, he will not be accused of treating the subject either 
carelessly or in a partisan spirit. The attempt has been made 
to give a sympathetic exposition of each system considered, 
however far it may fall short of affording an ideal solution of 
the ultimate problems of Ethics. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I. 

PAGE 

The Ethical System of Richard Cumberland . . i 



CHAPTER II. 
The Ethical System of Richard Cumberland {continued) .... 28 

CHAPTER III. 
The Relation of Shaftesbury and Hutcheson to Utilitarianism 51 

CHAPTER IV. 
Gay's Ethical System 63 

CHAPTER V. 
Hume's Ethical System 77 

Conclusion 96 



CHAPTER I. 

THE ETHICAL SYSTEM OF RICHARD CUMBER- 
LAND. 1 

WHILE the doctrine of Universalistic Hedonism has 
played a most conspicuous part in English Ethics since 
the time of Paley and Bentham, it is not commonly realized that 
the essential features of the system were stated and developed 
by a contemporary of the Cambridge Platonists. It is true that 
Cumberland's treatise, De legibus naturae, like most ethical 
works of the time, was largely controversial in character, having 
been written to refute Hobbes. Moreover, the jural aspect of 
the system, implied by the very title of the treatise, tends to 
obscure what for us is by far its most important feature. And 
even this is not all. The ' common good ' which Cumberland 
regarded as the end of all truly moral action, includes ' perfec- 
tion ' as well as ' happiness,' which leads to serious confusion 
in the working out of the system. But, making all allowances 
for what was incidental in the external form of the work, and 

1 Perhaps a word should be said regarding the relation of my own treatment 
of Cumberland to that of Dr. Frank E. Spaulding, in Richard Cumberland ah 
Begriinder der englischen Ethik (Leipzig, 1894). I had completed my study 
of Cumberland's system before I knew of this dissertation. Before putting my 
results in final form, I read the dissertation with much interest, but I am not aware 
that my own treatment was modified as a consequence. While I agree in the 
main with Dr. Spaulding's interpretation of Cumberland, and recognize in the 
dissertation a very thorough piece of work, my own treatment will be found quite 
different. I have given considerably more attention to other writers, in my attempt 
to show the relation of the De legibus naturae to preceding and contemporary 
thought, and have passed somewhat lightly over the parts of the work which 
seemed to be merely incidental, and not of importance for the further develop- 
ment of the principles involved. In particular, I have attempted, as far as pos- 
sible, to separate the constructive part of the treatise from the controversial part, 
which has led me to exhibit the jural aspect of the system last, thus showing in 
how far the system is logically complete without it. Other differences will be 
obvious to any one who may take the trouble to compare these chapters with Dr. 
Spaulding's dissertation. 



2 ENGLISH UTILITARIANISM. [Chap. 

the confusion of two principles which have long since become 
clearly differentiated, it is well worth while to examine with 
some care the ablest, or at any rate the most successful, 
opponent of Hobbes and the true founder of English Utili- 
tarianism. 

It would be quite impossible adequately to treat of any im- 
portant ethical system, without taking some account of the 
views of the author's contemporaries ; but this is particularly 
necessary in the case of early writers. In their works we are 
almost sure to find in artificial combination principles which 
are now regarded as logically distinct, and the only possible 
explanation of the actual form of the system in question is 
often to be sought in contemporary influences. Sometimes, 
of course, an investigation of this sort is difficult, and, however 
carefully prosecuted, yields no very certain results. Fortu- 
nately we are not thus hampered in the case of Cumberland. 
We shall find difficulty and uncertainty enough in certain 
aspects of his system, but there is little doubt with regard to 
the formative influences in his case. In his view of the nature 
of man, our author stands in the closest and most obvious rela- 
tion to Grotius and to Hobbes, — his relation to the former 
being that of substantial agreement ; to the latter, that of 
opposition. We must, then, consider in the briefest possible 
way the ethical views of these two authors — particularly as 
regards the then current conception of Laws of Nature — and 
also notice the tendencies represented by the various opponents 
of Hobbes. 

Of course, the idea of Laws of Nature was by no means 
original with Grotius. A Stoical conception at first, it had 
exercised a profound influence upon Roman Law, and had 
reappeared as an essential feature in the system of Thomas 
Aquinas. Here, however, as Sidgwick points out, it "was 
rather the wider notion which belongs to Ethics than the nar- 
rower notion with which Jurisprudence or Politics is primarily 
concerned." 2 It is one of the most important services of 
Grotius that he distinguished between the provinces of Ethics 

1 Hist, of Ethics, p. 159. 



I.] RICHARD CUMBERLAND. 3 

and Jurisprudence, the result being as fortunate for the former 
as for the latter. 1 However, as Sidgwick remarks, while the 
distinction is clearly enough made in the body of his epoch- 
making work, Dejure belli et pads, still, in the general account 
which he gives of Natural Law, the wider ethical notion is 
retained. It will be important for the reader to keep this in 
mind. 

In one of the earlier passages of the Prolegomena to his De 
jure belli et pacis, Grotius makes a significant statement regard- 
ing his view of the nature of man. Among the properties 
which are peculiar to man is a desire for society, and not only 
so, but for a life spent tranquilly and rationally. 2 The asser- 
tion that by nature each seeks only his own advantage, cannot 
be conceded. Even animals manifest an altruistic instinct in 
caring for their young, while children show compassion at a 
very early age. In adult man, that which in the lower stages 
of development had manifested itself as instinctive altruistic 
conduct, becomes self-conscious and rational. And this ten- 
dency to the conservation of society is the source of ' Jus' or 
Natural Law, properly so-called. 3 Natural Law would remain 
even if there were no God. But of the existence of God we 
are assured, partly by reason, partly by constant tradition. 
And here we are brought to another origin of 'Jus,' i.e., the 
free will of God. But even Natural Law, though it proceed 
from the nature of man, may yet rightly be ascribed to God, 
because it was by his will that such principles came to exist 
in us. 4 

The relation between Natural Law and that which proceeds 
from the arbitrary will of God is of some importance. Appar- 
ently the latter is always in addition to the former, never in 
contradiction with it, 5 though it must be confessed that the 
author's treatment is wavering. As Sidgwick says, 6 according 
to Grotius, Natural Law may be overruled in any particular 
case by express revelation. It is to be noted, however, that 

1 See Jodl, Geschichte der Ethik, vol. i, p. 102. 

2 WhewelPs edition, p. xli. 3 Ibid., p. xliv. 4 Ibid., p. xlvii. 
6 See, e.g., Ibid., p. lxxii. 6 Hist, of Ethics, p. 160. 



4 ENGLISH UTILITARIANISM. [Chap. 

this does not mean that Natural Law, as such, can be super- 
seded by Divine Law, but rather that a special act which would 
ordinarily be a transgression of Natural Law may be right 
merely because God has commanded it. At best, however, 
this seems to contradict the fundamental principles of the sys- 
tem. But, aside from the question of a possible conflict be- 
tween Natural and Divine Law, there is a further difficulty. 
Divine Law is what the name would indicate. In the case of 
such law, it may be said : God did not command an act because 
it was just, but it was just because God commanded it. 1 In the 
case of Natural Law, the reverse would seem to hold true ; but 
the language of Grotius on this point is somewhat ambiguous. 
For instance, we have seen that Natural Law may be ascribed 
to God, " because it was by his will that such principles came 
to exist in us"; but, on the other hand, Grotius holds that just 
as God cannot make twice two not be four, he cannot make 
that which is intrinsically bad not be bad. 2 The undoubted 
confusion which one finds here suggests the difficulty of medi- 
ating between the views later represented by Descartes and by 
Cudworth: (i) that moral distinctions depend upon the arbi- 
trary will of God ; and (2) that they do not thus depend. 

From the above it will be seen that Grotius insists upon the 
social and the rational nature of man. As to the proximate 
(not ultimate) origin of Natural Law, there seems to be a slight 
ambiguity. Now it appears to be founded upon the primitive 
altruistic instinct, and now upon the rational nature of man. 3 
Probably it would be fair to say that, according to Grotius, the 
two are equally essential to human nature, which he regards as 
logically prior to Natural Law, just as that is logically prior to 
particular civil laws. The relation between Natural Law and 
Divine Law has just been considered. Logically, the latter 
should always be in addition to, never in conflict with, the 
former. When Grotius practically does allow such conflict, we 
must regard it as a natural, but not a necessary, concession to 
theology. Again, the relation of God to Natural Law is not 

1 De jure, p. 20. 2 Ibid., p. 12. 

8 Cf. Cumberland, who probably follows Grotius here, as so often. 



I.] RICHARD CUMBERLAND. 5 

quite clear. On the whole, however, Grotius would seem to 
hold that certain things are right, others wrong, in the nature 
of things, i.e., apart from the will of God. Whether the nature 
of things be ultimately the same with the nature of God, we do 
not here need to ask. The question would hardly have occurred 
to Grotius. 

It is probable that the ethical and political philosophy of 
Hobbes is not so closely connected with his mechanical philoso- 
phy as he himself would have had us believe. Certainly it is 
quite comprehensible by itself. Indeed, in the course of his 
expositions, Hobbes ordinarily refers to common experience 
rather than to his own first principles. The starting-point of 
his ethical speculation is probably to be found in the then cur- 
rent conception of Laws of Nature, 1 which we have just been 
considering. This will be assumed to be the case in what 
follows. 

In order fully to understand Hobbes's view of the nature of 
man, we must distinguish (i) man's need of society ; (2) his 
fitness for society ; (3) his love of society, for its own sake. 
(1) That man has need of society, — in the sense of an organ- 
ized commonwealth, — Hobbes would have been the first to in- 
sist. Out of society, indeed, man cannot continue to exist at 
all. But (2) man's fitness for society does not by any means 
keep pace with his need of the same. Children and fools need 
society, if possible, more than others, and yet they "cannot 
enter into it," in Hobbes's sense of the words. Indeed, many, 
perhaps most, men remain throughout life ' unfit ' for society, 
either through defect of mind or want of education. 2 The 
main reason for this unfitness, however, is man's fundamental 
egoism. If it be asked : (3) Does man love society for its 
own sake ? Hobbes replies with a decided negative. " All 
society ... is either for gain or for glory ; that is, not so 
much for love of our fellows as for the love of ourselves." 3 So 
much is plain, but it is not equally plain in what terms we are 
to express this primitive egoism. Sometimes pleasure as such 

1 Cf. Sidgwick's Hist, of Ethics, p. 162. 

2 See De cive, Works, Molesworth's ed., vol. ii, p. 2, note. 8 Ibid., p. 5. 



6 ENGLISH UTILITARIANISM. [Chap. 

would seem to be the end ; sometimes (probably more often) 
self-preservation. 

Starting, then, with the assumption of man's original and 
ineradicable egoism ; and the further assumption that nature 
has made men essentially equal in the faculties both of body 
and of mind, 1 so that all may aspire to everything, — it is easy 
to see that the hypothetical ' state of nature' must be a 
' state of war,' with all the attendant evils which Hobbes so 
tersely, yet vividly, describes. 2 How are men to escape the 
consequences of their own anti-social natures ? The possibility 
of deliverance depends upon the fact that man is not merely a 
bundle of selfish appetites, but, — as' Hobbes says, — "True 
Reason is ... no less a part of human nature than any other 
faculty or affection of the mind." Moreover, < True Reason ' is 
"a certain law." 3 

It is natural that one should ask just what is meant by 
'True Reason,' and Hobbes has a note on the subject, 4 which, 
however, is not particularly illuminating. " By Right Reason in 
the natural state of man," he says, " I understand not, as 
many do, an infallible faculty, but the act of reasoning, that is, 
the peculiar and true ratiocination of every man concerning 
those actions of his which may either redound to the damage 
or benefit of his neighbors." He further explains that he calls 
reason " true, that is, concluding from true principles, rightly 
framed, because that the whole breach of the Laws of Nature 
consists in the false reasoning, or rather folly, of those men 
who do not see those duties they are necessarily to perform 
towards others, in order to their own conservation." 5 In a 
word, there is no infallible faculty of Right Reason that can be 
implicitly trusted. It can only be proven right by the event, 
and the test is the conservation of the individual. 

1 See Leviathan, vol. iii, p. no. 

2 Ibid., p. 1 13. For passages which seem to show that, in his description of the 
' state of nature,' Hobbes does not understand that he is giving an historical ac- 
count of the origin of human society, see, e.g., Leviathan, vol. iii, p. 114, and par- 
ticularly the last part of the interesting note in De cive, vol. ii, p. 10. 

8 De cive, vol. ii, p. 1.6. 4 Ibid. 

5 See, also, De corpore politico, vol. iv, p. 225, where the author says: "But 
this is certain, seeing Right Reason is not existent," etc. 



I.] RICHARD CUMBERLAND. 7 

However, Right Reason, in the sense above explained, leads 
us to formulate certain Laws of Nature. Such a 'law' is defined 
as " the dictate of Right Reason, conversant about those things 
which are either to be done or omitted for the constant preserva- 
tion of life and members, as much as in us lies." The first 
and fundamental Law of Nature is " that peace is to be sought 
after, where it may be found ; and where not, there to provide 
ourselves for helps of war." 1 From this law, all the others, — 
twenty in De cive, eighteen in Leviathan, — are derived. 
"They direct the ways, either to peace or self-defense." 

We are not here concerned with the enumeration and de- 
duction of the particular Laws of Nature, which will readily be 
found by referring to Leviathan, De cive, or De corpore politico. 
The question as to their exact significance {qua Laws of 
Nature), however, is of the greatest importance for the sys- 
tem ; and it is just here that the expositions of Hobbes are 
least helpful. The philosopher himself says : " The Laws of 
Nature are immutable and eternal : what they forbid can never 
be lawful ; what they command can never be unlawful." 2 At 
the same time, it is important to observe that in a state of 
nature it would be irrational for a man to obey these laws, for 
he would have no assurance that others would do the same. 
Such conduct would defeat the end which all these laws have 
in mind, i.e., the preservation of the individual. Indeed, as 
Hobbes reminds us, they are not < laws ' at all in the ordinary 
sense, "since they are nothing else but certain conclusions, 
understood by reason, of things to be done and omitted"; 3 
whereas the element of compulsion is essential to ' law ' in the 
strict sense. 

In order that there may be any security whatever, a govern- 
ment of some sort must be established. The many conflicting 
wills must be changed into one, not by a change in human 
nature, — which, of course, is impossible, — but by the several 
individuals submitting themselves either to a " council " or to 
" one man." In this compact, the individual gives up all but 

1 De cive, vol. ii, p. 16. Cf. Leviathan, vol. iii, p. 117. 

2 De cive, vol. ii, p. 46. 8 Ibid., p. 49. 



8 ENGLISH UTILITARIANISM. [Chap. 

the right of defending himself against personal violence. To 
the governing power belong the "sword of justice" and the 
" sword of war," and — what necessarily follows — judgment as 
to the "right use " of each. But this is not all. Since differ- 
ence of opinion concerning "rneum and tuum, just and unjust, 
profitable and unprofitable, good and evil, honest and dis- 
honest," a etc., are productive of discord, the civil power must 
define the above. Also, the supreme power of the state is to 
be judge of all theological doctrines, in so far as they tend to 
practical results. In short, this power is " absolute," as 
Hobbes himself frankly calls it. 

We must now ask: What has become of the Laws of 
Nature, with which we started ? We have already seen that 
Hobbes refers to them as "eternal and immutable." In the 
latter part of De cive? he says, using words that Cudworth 
himself could not have objected to: "Natural [Law] is that 
which God hath declared to all men by his eternal word born 
with them, to wit, their natural reason ; and this is that law 
which, in this whole book, I have endeavored to unfold." But 
suppose that civil laws should be in opposition to these Laws of 
Nature ? Hobbes meets the query with characteristic boldness. 
" By the virtue of the natural law which forbids breach of 
covenant, the Law of Nature commands us to keep all the civil 
laws. For where we are tied to obedience before we know 
what will be commanded us, there we are universally tied to 
obey in all things. Whence it follows, that no civil law what- 
soever, which tends not to the reproach of the deity 3 . . . can 
possibly be against the Law of Nature. For though the Law of 
Nature forbid theft, adultery, &c. ; yet, if the civil law com- 
mands us to invade anything, that invasion is not theft, adul- 
tery, &c." 4 The conclusion to which we are brought by the 
philosopher himself is rather startling: Nothing in the civil 
laws can be against the Laws of Nature, because not only is 

1 De cive, p. 77. — Note the heterogeneous items. 2 See p. 186. 

3 This is only an apparent exception, for it would be precisely for the civil 
power to decide, in any particular case, what was, or was not, " to the reproach of 
the deity." 4 De cive, pp. 190, 191. 



I.] RICHARD CUMBERLAND. 9 

the civil power behind the Laws of Nature, that which makes 
them properly 'laws,' but also it is that, and that alone, 
which gives them their content. It makes comparatively little 
difference what the Laws of Nature command or forbid, so long 
as it lies wholly with the civil power to define the terms used. 

Some pages back it was seen that there was ambiguity in 
Hobbes's use of ' Right Reason.' In De corpore politico », we are 
told : " But this is certain, seeing Right Reason is not existent, 
the reason of some man or men must supply the place there- 
of." x In other words, the arbitrary use of civil power must 
make up for the lack of Right Reason in man. Again, in 
Leviathan? "The unwritten Law of Nature ... is now be- 
come, of all laws, the most obscure, and has consequently the 
greatest need of able interpreters." But who should be the 
interpreter ? Hobbes candidly remarks : " The interpretation 
of the Laws of Nature, in a commonwealth, dependeth not on 
the books of moral philosophy. ... That which I have 
written in this treatise concerning the moral virtues . . . 
though it be evident truth, is not therefore presently a law ; 
but because in all commonwealths in the world it is part of the 
civil law." No amount of valid reasoning can vindicate the 
Laws of Nature. Nothing but their presence in the statute- 
books of the commonwealths of the world can do that. And 
the reason why they can be said to be so universally recognized 
is that the same power, in each particular case, that compels 
obedience to them, also practically furnishes them with their 
content. It may also be noticed that Hobbes has proceeded 
deductively, — in appearance, at least, — in arriving at his 
Laws of Nature. If presence in the statute-book be the only 
test, he should have proceeded inductively. The utter confu- 
sion which we find here requires no comment. The Laws of 
Nature, with which our philosopher began, have vanished into 
thin air. We learn what is good for us as well as what is 
right, what is true as well as what is just, from the powers 
that be. There would be no place for a theorist like Hobbes 
himself in his own ideal state. 

1 See vol. iv, p. 225. 2 See vol. iii, p. 262. 



IO ENGLISH UTILITARIANISM. [Chap. 

It was inevitable that a theory of political absolutism like that 
of Hobbes, — involving as it did a wholly egoistic system of 
ethics, the unlovely character of which the philosopher was at 
no pains whatever to conceal, — should excite the most violent 
opposition. But while the ethical writers of his own time 
and country were practically unanimous in their opposition to 
Hobbes, their methods of attack were by no means the same. 
Some were more incensed at the brutal egoism of the system, 
some at the arbitrary character which Hobbes had assigned 
to moral distinctions ; though it is fair to suppose that all 
were a good deal disturbed by both sides of his doctrine. A 
general statement like this, however, is apt to be misleading, 
as it does not suggest the complexity of the facts. It is prob- 
able that in periods of controversy, quite as much as in periods 
of constructive work, the individualities of prominent writers 
play a determining part in shaping their productions. Hence 
we must be on our guard against supposing that the conven- 
tional division of the opponents of Hobbes into ' schools ' is 
wholly satisfactory. For instance, Whewell classes together : 
(i) Sharrock, Henry More, and Cumberland, and (2) Cudworth 
and Clark ; while Sidgwick, on the other hand, distinguishes 
between (1) the " Cambridge moralists," including all the 
above but Sharrock, Cumberland, and Clark, and (2) Cumber- 
land. This does not imply any essential difference in the way 
that Whewell and Sidgwick interpret the doctrines of the 
authors named. Any such classification is largely a matter of 
convenience and more or less arbitrary. For our present, pur- 
pose, three men may fairly be taken as typical of the tenden- 
cies represented by the opponents of Hobbes, viz., Cudworth, 
More, and Cumberland. 

Cudworth, of course, stands for Intellectualism. He would 
reduce morality to a system of truths. The result is that, 
in his unfinished Treatise concerning Eternal and Immutable 
Morality, we have a noteworthy system of metaphysics, rather 
than a direct and explicit treatment of what are ordinarily 
regarded as the problems of ethics. Indeed, so much is Cud- 
worth concerned to establish a system of " eternal and immu- 






I.] RICHARD CUMBERLAND. II 

table " truths, among which are the truths of ethics, that never 
once, in the course of the treatise just referred to, does he take 
the trouble to combat the egoism of Hobbes. Obviously we are 
not concerned with his system here. Cumberland, on the 
other hand, is singularly devoid of metaphysical interests, and 
the passages in his treatise De legibus naturae which do inci- 
dentally treat of metaphysical questions, are certainly the least 
satisfactory part of his work. To the side of Hobbes's system 
which teaches the arbitrary character of moral distinctions, he 
replies by reproducing what we have already seen to be the 
views of Grotius regarding Natural Law; while, in opposition 
to the egoism of Hobbes, he teaches what practically amounts 
to the system of Universalistic Hedonism. As the first Eng- 
lish writer standing for this principle, he has been taken as the 
subject of the present chapter. 

More, whose Enchiridion Ethicum enjoyed an enormous 
popularity in its own generation, 1 is particularly hard to 
classify ; but it is certainly safe to say that he occupies a posi- 
tion logically intermediate between the other two. The fact 
that he so nearly refrained from publishing his own work, 
owing to the supposed objections of Cudworth, is in itself a 
sufficient indication that the two authors concerned regarded 
their systems as standing for very much the same principles. 
On the other hand, however, while Cudworth had practically 
neglected the affective side of our nature in his own treatise, 
More makes the ' Boniform Faculty ' (which is at once the 
touch-stone of virtue and that by which virtue in the moral 
agent is immediately and certainly rewarded) not only coordi- 
nate with Right Reason, but constantly suggests its primacy. 
It is difficult to express in a few words More's view of the 
relation in which these two faculties stand to each other. 
Sometimes he even seems to identify them, but, if one may 
venture upon a perilously concise statement, the case stands 
thus. In a 'state of grace,' the < Boniform Faculty' (which 
plays much the same part as conscience) is all-sufficient. No 

1 See WhewelPs Hist, of Mor. Phil, in England, Lect. iii. In spite of its pop- 
ularity, however, the Enchiridion has never been translated into English. 



12 ENGLISH UTILITARIANISM. [Chap. 

appeal to Right Reason is necessary, or desirable. But, 
" since there are some men who have lost all sense of God and 
divine things, and recognize no fixed rule in their faculties," 
these "must be approached in another way," i.e., by Right 
Reason. The author therefore draws from this store " certain 
principles immediately true, and in need of no proof, but from 
which almost all moral reasoning (as mathematical demonstra- 
tions from common axioms) may be clearly and easily de- 
duced." These he calls 'Noemata.' 

An examination of these ' Noemata ' at once shows that we 
no longer have to do with the intellectualism of Cudworth. 
The first twelve ' Noemata ' treat of our duty toward ourselves, 
and might fairly be termed 'maxims of prudence.' The good 
is here denned (not quite adequately for the system) as that 
" which to any perceptive life, or stage of such life, is grateful, 
pleasing, and suitable, and connected with the preservation of 
the percipient." 1 The remaining eleven 'Noemata' concern 
our duties to God and to other men. Two of these would seem 
quite distinctly to point in the direction of Universalistic 
Hedonism. " That good which you prefer for yourself in given 
circumstances, you ought to prefer for another in the same cir- 
cumstances, so far as it is possible without injury to any third 
person." 2 And again, " If it is good that one man should be 
supplied with means to live well and happily, it follows by a 
sure and wholly mathematical analogy that it is twice as good 
for two men to be supplied, three times for three, a thousand 
times for a thousand," etc. 3 

It might very well seem as if, in More, we had already found 
an exponent of the Utilitarian principle ; but this is certainly 
not the case. The system is one of the most perplexed in the 
whole history of English Ethics, but on the point just referred 
to, at least, the author does not leave us in doubt. Even in 
the 'Scholia' appended to the chapter in which the 'Noemata' 
are treated, we find a significant statement of the author's posi- 
tion. Referring to previous attempts to find some one princi- 

1 Noema i, p. 25, of the fourth ed. of the Enchiridion. 

2 Noema xiv, p. 29. 3 Noema xviii, p. 30. 



I.] RICHARD CUMBERLAND. 1 3 

pie, into which morality could be resolved, he shows that some 
have taken ' sociality ' as the first and simplest principle ; 
others, ' zeal for the public good,' — " both parties supposing 
that there is no perfection or happiness pertaining to human 
nature which is not bound up with communion or society." 1 
But " it is the internal life of the mind, and the pleasure which 
is derived from a sense of virtue," that is the proper object of 
ethics. 2 This would exist, if there were only one man in the 
world. 3 It is not evident whom More has in mind here, and 
the criticisms which follow do not apply to Universalistic 
Hedonism (which had not yet been advanced, at least in Eng- 
land 4 ) ; but it is clear that More himself had no thought to de- 
velop what we would now recognize as a possible Intuitional 
basis of the Utilitarian principle. 5 As a matter of fact, the 
system is one of unconscious and undifferentiated Hedonism. 
More says, in substance: A thing is simply and absolutely 
good which is pleasing, not to the animal appetite, which man 
has in common with the brutes, but to the Boniform Faculty, 
which distinguishes him as a man. 6 However, as the author 
frequently admits, this particular kind of pleasure is not suffi- 
cient in order to perfect happiness. A certain amount of ex- 
ternal goods is necessary. 7 The Good, then, is happiness, and 
happiness is pleasure, — but pleasure of a particularly refined 
sort, such as only a person of developed moral sensibilities 
could enjoy. The happiness considered is almost always that 
of the agent ; but it would be as unjust to call the system Ego- 
istic as it would be misleading to call it Utilitarian. In place 
of < sociality,' or * zeal for the public good,' More proposes, as 
the necessary unifying principle, "true and sincere love of 
God," 8 and holds that all the ' Noemata ' may be reduced to 
this. In short, we have here a theological system of ethics, un- 
consciously hedonistic, but never more than vaguely suggesting 
Utilitarianism. If More had recognized the hedonistic charac- 

1 See p. 33. 2 See p. 35. 3 See p. 36. 

4 The Enchiridion was published in 1669, and Cumberland's De legibus naturae 
did not appear till 1672. 5 Cf. Sidgwick's Methods of Ethics, p. 380. 

6 See p. 47. Also the ' scholia' appended to Chap, ii, in which More attempts 
to distinguish his own view from ' Epicureanism.' 7 See, e.g., p. 2. 8 See p. 37. 



14 ENGLISH UTILITARIANISM. [Chap. 

ter of his own system, it is not impossible that he might have 
made ' the greatest happiness of the greatest number ' the end 
of moral action, but the important fact for us is that he did not 
develop his system in this direction. 

We shall now turn to a more careful examination of the first 
English moralist who can properly be termed a Utilitarian. 
We have not here, as often happens, the difficulty of keeping 
in mind two or more different works by the same author, possi- 
bly differing in point of view, when considering any particular 
problem arising in connection with the system. In fact, the 
task might seem to be an easy one, as we have to depend, for 
our knowledge of Cumberland's ethics, wholly upon the treatise 
entitled De legibus naturae?- which was first published in 1672. 
This, however, is by no means the case. While a thinker of 
no ordinary ability, and standing for a principle which has be- 
come clearly differentiated in the later development of English 
Ethics, Cumberland is so utterly lacking in a talent for exposi- 
tion that the adequate presentation of his views is a matter of 
peculiar difficulty. Indeed, even apart from its singular lack of 
method, the fact that the work is so largely controversial in char- 
acter, increases the difficulty of extracting from it the author's 
own system. The order of exposition is in many respects so 
unfortunate that one is tempted to disregard it altogether ; but, 
even at the expense of some repetition, it seems desirable to 
begin by noticing the principal points in the author's own 
somewhat elaborate Introduction. Here he was certainly writ- 
ing with his whole system in view, 2 and it is well to let the 
somewhat heterogeneous elements that enter into it appear 
first in as close combination as they are capable of. After this 

1 The whole title reads : De legibus naturae : disquisitio philosophica, in qua 
earum forma, summa capita, or do, promulgatio, et obligatio e rerum natter a inves- 
tigantur ; quin etiam elementa philosophiae Hobbianae, cum moralis turn civilis, 
considerantur et refutantur. The passages cited in the following exposition will 
be from the English translation by John Maxwell, published in 1727, and all refer- 
ences will be to the pages of that edition. 

2 It is to be noticed that he constantly uses the past tense, showing what has 
been the method of exposition in the following work. 



I.] RICHARD CUMBERLAND. 1 5 

general survey of the system, based upon the Introduction, we 
shall neglect the author's own order of exposition, and consider 
topically all the important problems which are discussed in the 
treatise. 

Cumberland begins by asserting that the Laws of Nature are 
the foundation of all moral and civil knowledge. They may be 
deduced in two ways: (1) From the manifest < effects' that 
flow from them ; (2) from the ' causes ' whence they them- 
selves arise. The author chooses to adopt the latter method, 
i.e., that of 'arguing from cause to effect.' The former is 
practically the inductive, the latter the deductive method. 
Two objections are commonly made to the inductive method, 
as applied to the solution of the present problem. (1) It is 
said that we cannot infer from the writings of a few men, or 
even nations, what are the opinions or judgments of all men. 
(2) Even if the above objection did not hold, 'the authority of 
a known law-giver' is wanting to give these judgments the force 
of 'laws' to all men. 1 To neither of these objections does 
Cumberland himself attach much weight. The agreement of 
men is practically complete as to the things most essential, e.g., 
worship of some deity, and a degree of humanity sufficient to 
prevent murder, theft, and adultery. Again, if the Laws of 
Nature be < laws ' at all, they need no new authority superadded 
1 to that originally belonging to them. However, to establish 
the existence of Natural Laws beyond the possibility of a 
doubt, Cumberland proposes to reverse the usual order of treat- 
ment. He says : " I have thought it proper to make a philo- 
sophical inquiry into their causes [i.e., those of the Laws of 
Nature], as well internal as external, the nearer and the more 
remote ; for by this method we shall at last arrive at their first 
Author, or efficient Cause, from whose essential perfections, 
and internal sanction of them, by rewards and punishments, 
we have shown that their authority arises." 2 

It will be seen that the method to be employed can hardly 
be described by the single word 'deductive.' First, we must 
work back to the First Cause ; then, from the nature of the 

1 The reference here is plainly to Hobbes. 2 See p. 13. 



1 6 ENGLISH UTILITARIANISM. [Chap. 

deity, as well as from human nature, which will have been con- 
sidered on the way, certain results will follow. The * Plato- 
nists,' to be sure, find an easy way out of the difficulty by as- 
suming ' innate ideas ' ; but Cumberland is obliged to confess 
that he has " not been so happy as to learn the Laws of Nature 
in so short a way." 1 Not that he will oppose those who be- 
lieve themselves more fortunate in this respect ; but it seems 
ill-advised to base everything upon " an hypothesis which has 
been rejected by the generality of philosophers, as well heathen 
as Christian, and can never be proved against the Epicureans, 
with whom is our chief controversy." The reference to the 
1 Epicureans ' is significant. The author proposes to fight 
Hobbes with his own weapons. And, this being the case, he 
sets out to prove that " the Nature of Things, which subsists 
and is continually governed by its First Cause, does necessarily 
imprint upon our minds some practical propositions . . . con- 
cerning the study of promoting the joint felicity of all ration- 
als ; and that the terms of these propositions do immediately 
and directly signify, that the First Cause, in his original consti- 
tution of things, has annexed the greatest rewards and punish- 
ments to the observance and neglect of these truths." Whence 
it manifestly follows that these are « laws/ " Laws being noth- 
ing but practical propositions, with rewards or punishments 
annexed, promulg'd by competent authority." 2 

The first point to be established, then, is that there are Laws 
of Nature, in the legitimate sense of the words. Having indi- 
cated his line of argument, which we shall consider later, Cum- 
berland proceeds to the more characteristic and constructive 
part of his doctrine. From a consideration of the practical 
propositions which may fairly be ranked as Laws of Nature, 3 it 
appears that they may be reduced to one universal one. This 
may be expressed as follows : " The endeavor, to the utmost of 
our power, of promoting the common good of the whole system 
of rational agents, conduces, as far as in us lies, to the good of 
every part, in which our own happiness, as that of a part, is 

1 See p. 14. 2 Ibid. 

8 Cumberland nowhere attempts exhaustively to enumerate them. 



I.] RICHARD CUMBERLAND. 1 7 

contained. But contrary action produces contrary effects, and 
consequently our own misery, among that of others. " 2 

This reduction of the several Laws of Nature to a single 
ultimate one, regarding conduct on the part of the individual 
that shall conduce to the common weal, is shown by the author 
to be useful in a double way: (1) it is easier to remember (sic) 
one principle than many; and (2) "a certain rule or measure 
is afforded to the prudent man's judgment, by the help whereof 
he may ascertain that just measure in his actions and affec- 
tions in which virtue consists." 2 This is eminently character- 
istic. The author's aim is practical throughout. 3 If he at- 
tempts to rationalize morality, to give a scientific explanation 
and justification of the existing moral code, it is in order that 
his work may prove an important help to right living. It is 
probable that Cumberland, like some contemporary writers, 
considerably exaggerates the ' practical ' value of correct ethical 
theory. 

The relation between Cumberland's Laws of Nature and 
Cudworth's Eternal Truths should be noticed. How shall we 
distinguish the so-called ' practical principles ' which we have 
been considering, from others equally ultimate, e.g., those of 
,mathematics ? We say that the former ' oblige ' us ; the latter 
r iot, — but why ? Simply by reason of the nature of the 
.effects, according to Cumberland. We can afford to disregard 
/many, at least, of the truths of geometry; not so the moral 
law, for our happiness, — and, as the author shows later, even 
jour preservation, — depends upon our observance of it. The 
criterion, then, is frankly that of 'consequences,' — a fact that 
must be borne in mind. But these 'consequences,' in part, at 
least, are not arbitrary. "The happiness of each individual 
(from the prospect of enjoying which, or being deprived of it, 
the whole sanction is taken) is derived from the best state of 
the whole system, as the nourishment of each member of an 
animal depends upon the nourishment of the whole mass of 
blood diffused through the whole." 4 Now the actions which, 
by virtue of their own « natural ' force and efficacy, are calcu- 

1 See p. 16. 2 See p. 30. 3 See p. 36. 4 See p. 21. 



1 8 ENGLISH UTILITARIANISM. [Chap. 

lated to promote the common good, are called < naturally good.' 
Again, the common good being the end, " such actions as take 
the shortest way to this effect . . . are naturally called ' right,' 
because of their natural resemblance to a right line (sic), which 
is the shortest that can be drawn between any two given 
points, . . . but the rule itself is called * right,' as pointing 
out the shortest way to the end." 1 

All this is characteristic and important, making allowance 
for the quaint use of language. The comparison of humanity 
to an organism is one to which the author constantly recurs. 2 
That there is no 'categorical imperative' for Cumberland, is 
clear. The Laws of Nature themselves have, and need, a 
* reason for being.' Conduct in accordance with them con- 
duces to the common weal. It is with reference to this end, 
that even they are ' right.' 

The Introduction closes with a confession on the part of the 
author that his work is not altogether literary in style or 
method. The passage is itself, perhaps, calculated to empha- 
size this statement : " Its face is not painted with the florid 
colors of Rhetoric, nor are its eyes sparkling and sportive, the 
signs of a light wit ; it wholly applies itself, as it were, with 
the composure and sedateness of an old man, to the study ot 
natural knowledge, to gravity of manners, and to the cultivat- 
ing of severer learning." 3 

We shall now neglect the author's own order of exposition 
almost entirely, and endeavor to see the system as a whole, 
both in its strength and its weakness. It might seem as if we 
were logically bound to begin with a consideration of the 
Nature of Things, as Cumberland himself professes to do. 4 A 
very casual examination of the work under consideration, how- 
ever, would be sufficient to show that the titles of the chapters 
give but a very indefinite idea of the nature of their contents. 
What Cumberland actually does, at the beginning of his trea- 
tise, is to explain at considerable length and with great care 
his notion of Laws of Nature. It is probable, however, that 

1 Seep. 22. 2 See, e.g., p. 115. 3 See p. 36. 4 See title of first chapter. 



I.] RICHARD CUMBERLAND. 1 9 

he was induced to do this largely for controversial reasons ; 
and we are first of all concerned with the constructive part of 
the work, although it is quite impossible to separate this en- 
tirely from the controversial part. It must always be remem- 
bered, — the title of the treatise to the contrary notwithstand- 
ing, — that the jural aspect of the system is not its most 
essential feature. Cumberland held the views that he did 
regarding Natural Laws in common with a great many of his 
contemporaries, — perhaps the majority of those representing 
the conservative tendency. 1 His originality consisted in his 
attempt to discover an underlying principle from which all the 
special moral < laws ' or < practical propositions ' could be de- 
duced. 

It does not seem best, then, to begin, as Cumberland actually 
did, with an examination of the concept of Natural Law. Nor 
is one tempted to begin with the Nature of Things, ostensibly 
the first topic treated. Cumberland uses that expression 
throughout the treatise as if its meaning were perfectly clear 
and understood by everybody. His utterances on the subject, 
however, have all the confusion to which an author is liable 
whose interests are wholly practical, and who yet is obliged to 
speak in terms of an implicit metaphysic. At present we need 
notice only two passages. " The Nature of Things does not 
only signify this lower world, whereof we are a part, but its 

I Creator and Supreme Governor, God. ... It is certain that 
nly true propositions, whether speculative or practical, are 
imprinted upon our minds by the Nature of Things, because 
z. natural action points out that only which exists, and is never 
the cause of any falsehood, which proceeds wholly from a 
voluntary rashness, joining or separating notions which Nature 
has not joined or separated." 2 Again, "We cannot doubt 
of the nature of created beings, but that both things exter- 
nal, exciting thoughts in us, and our mind comparing these 
thoughts, are the causes of Necessary Truths." 3 The vague- 
ness and inconsequence of these remarks speak for themselves, 

1 Even Locke was strongly influenced by the current view. 

2 See p. 191. 3 See p. 192. 



20 ENGLISH UTILITARIANISM. [Chap. 

and show how unsatisfactory our author is when on metaphysi- 
cal ground. It is hardly necessary to call attention to Cum- 
berland's agreement with Descartes as to the origin of human 
error. 

On the whole, it seems best to begin our examination of the 
system by considering the author's view of the nature of man 
and of society. We have seen that Hobbes regarded society as 
artificial. According to his view, it was made up of a certain 
number of mutually repellent atoms, each atom being the 
radically and unalterably egoistic individual. The ' contract ' 
was a device by which the antagonistic wills of an indefinite 
number of self-seeking individuals gave place to the * one will ' 
of the sovereign. Cumberland pronounces emphatically against 
this view. When Hobbes likens men to * wolves,' bears,' 'ser- 
pents,' 2 etc., he is guilty of libel against human nature. Re- 
ferring to such remarks, our author says: "If they were true, 
it were evidently impossible to reduce such beasts of prey, 
always thirsting for the 'blood of their fellows, into a civil 
state." 2 The compact would avail nothing unless there were 
something in human nature that would make men abide by 
their promises. Cumberland might have added that Hobbes is 
not at liberty to make any ultimate appeal to reason in the 
matter, — even as showing what is for the individual's selfish 
interest, — for men learn what is ' good ' for them, as well as 
what is 'right,' from the powers that be. 

Hobbes had regarded the instinct of self-preservation, if not} 
the conscious seeking of one's own pleasure, as the fundamental 
spring of human action. For Cumberland, on the other handj 
sympathy is as much an attribute of human nature as a desire 
for one's own happiness. If this were not so, as is suggested 
above, society itself could not exist. To be sure, the author 
sometimes insists upon the pleasures of (a not too expensive) 
benevolence in a way to lead one to suspect that, after all, 
egoism may be at the basis of apparently disinterested conduct ; 3 
but such passages hardly need detract from the force of dis- 

1 De homine, vol. ii (Latin works, Molesworth's ed.), p. 91. 

2 See p. 295. 3 See, e.g., p. 211. 



I.] RICHARD CUMBERLAND. 21 

tinct utterances, like the above, regarding the impossibility of 
a society composed of absolutely egoistic individuals. The 
discussions regarding altruism vs. egoism which we meet with 
in the treatise, are sometimes quite confusing on account of 
the author's naive certainty that the good of the individual and 
the good of society are always (in the particular case as well as 
in the long run) identical. We have seen that, in the Introduc- 
tion, society is already compared to an organism. 1 Such being 
its nature, it is idle to speak of the good of one part as opposed 
to the good of another ; for the good of any particular part 
(i.e., any individual) clearly must depend upon the ' health 
of the social organism,' as Mr. Stephen would say. Cumber- 
land does not go so far as some modern writers in pushing 
this analogy, but it helps to bring out an important side of 
his system. 

So much in general regarding man's ' fitness' for society, so 
far as an original tendency in the direction of altruistic, as well 
as egoistic, conduct is concerned. Here man is regarded from 
the standpoint of society, which is to be compared to an organ- 
ism rather than to a collection of mutually repellent atoms. 
When Cumberland has the individual more particularly in 
mind, he is apt to insist more upon the ' rational ' nature of 
man. Before considering this question as to the meaning and 
scope of Right Reason, let us notice two definitions, and also 
the author's brief inventory of the powers of the mind. " By 
man," he says, at the beginning of Chap, ii, "I understand 
an animal endowed with a mind ; and Hobbes himself, in his 
treatise of Human Nature, acknowledges the mind to be one 
of the principal parts of man." By * animal' is understood 
" what the philosophers agree to be found in brutes : the 
powers of receiving increase by nourishment, of beginning 
motion, and of propagating their species." It is not quite 
clear that Cumberland would allow sensation to brutes. 2 How- 

1 See also p. 114. 

2 See, e.g., p. 94. Also cf. Spaulding's Richard Cumberland ah Begriinder der 
englischen Ethik, p. 26. There is an immense amount of physiological data in 
the treatise, and it is sometimes hard to tell whether the author is speaking in 
terms of psychology or of physiology. 



22 ENGLISH UTILITARIANISM. [Chap. 

ever, Re sometimes refers to sub-human manifestations of 
sympathy. As regards the mind, he says : "To the mind 
we ascribe Understanding and Will; to the Understanding 
we reduce Apprehending, Comparing, Judging, Reasoning, a 
Methodical Disposition, and the Memory of all these things and 
of the objects about which they are conversant. To the Will 
we ascribe both the simple acts of choosing and refusing, and 
that vehemence of those actions which discovers itself in the 
passions, over and above that emotion or disturbance of the 
body, which is visible in them." 1 

Such details are merely preliminary, and we shall now ask 
what is meant by ' Right Reason,' an expression which is 
constantly recurring in the treatise. Hobbes had practically 
denied that there was any such faculty in man. In Cumber- 
land's system, on the other hand, Right Reason plays an im- 
portant, if a somewhat Protean part. Here, as in the case of 
the Nature of Things, we find a degree of confusion that can 
only be explained by the fact that the author's interests are 
purely practical, and that he is speaking in terms of an incon- 
sistent metaphysic that he has never taken the trouble to think 
out. The following curious passage is perhaps the author's 
most explicit statement regarding the nature of Right Reason. 
He says, " I agree, however, with him [Hobbes] that by Right 
Reason is not to be understood an infallible Faculty (as he 
affirms many, but I know not who, to understand it) ; but yet 
by it is to be understood a faculty not false in these acts of 
judging. Nor is it properly understood to be an act of reason- 
ing (as he too rashly asserts), but an effect of the Judgment ; 
that is, true propositions treasured up in the memory, whether 
they be premises or conclusions, of which some that are prac- 
tical are called ' laws,' for actions are compared with these in 
order to examine their goodness, not with those acts of reason- 
ing which discover them ; yet I willingly allow that these acts 
of reasoning are also included in the notion of Right Reason." 2 
And then, as against Hobbes's view that, out of civil society, 
" every man's proper reason is to be esteemed, not only the 

1 See p. 94. 2 See p. 103. 






I.] RICHARD CUMBERLAND. 2 7, 

standard of his own actions, which he does at his own peril, but 
also the measure of other men's reason with respect to his 
affairs," 1 our author adds that this cannot be the case, " For, 
out of civil society, any one may distinguish Right Reason with- 
out making a comparison with his own. Because there is a 
common standard . . . the Nature of Things, as it lies before 
us, carefully to be observed and examined by all our faculties." 

The first of the passages just quoted is one of the most per- 
plexed in the whole treatise. Right Reason is not an "in- 
fallible faculty," yet "not false in these acts of judging"; it is 
not properly an "act of reasoning," but the resulting "true 
propositions," — yet these "acts of reasoning" are, after all, to 
be included under Right Reason. This seems hopeless, but 
perhaps we may find what Cumberland means by not expecting 
to find too much. First, with regard to that other expression 
so often used, 'The Nature of Things.' Cumberland is a 
wholly nai've realist. By the Nature of Things he seems to 
mean all that actually and objectively is, — including God as 
well as his world. And it is needless to say that Cumberland's 
God is a * transcendent ' deity. This Nature of Things being 
posited, we have a perfectly objective standard as regards not 
only theoretical truths but practical propositions. The Reason 
of man is such as to fit him to apprehend this Nature of Things 
exactly as it is, always provided that he does not, by a ' free ' 
act of will, choose to assent to that which is not clear and dis- 
tinct. Cumberland's test of truth and theory of error are the 
same as Descartes' s ; he differs from the founder of modern 
philosophy, of course, in his rejection of 'innate ideas.' For 
Cumberland, then, having no theory of cognition other than 
that of common-sense, and caring only for the truth of the de- 
liverances of Right Reason, it is a matter of indifference 
whether we call the latter a 'faculty,' an 'act of reasoning,' or 
the resulting ' true propositions.' In the last resort, Cumber- 
land, like Descartes, seems to depend upon the necessary 
truthfulness of God. 

We now see what, in general, Cumberland holds regarding 

1 This would apply, of course, only in the ' state of nature.' 



24 ENGLISH UTILITARIANISM. [Chap. 

the nature of man. He is not without original altruistic in- 
stincts, and is, moreover, essentially a rational being. That 
his instinctive altruism tends to fit him for society, goes of 
itself. But this alone is not sufficient. Alongside of the altru- 
istic instincts, are others that must be recognized as egoistic. 
The relation in which the two stand to each other is not clearly 
expressed, but, at any rate, it is evident that they would be 
likely to conflict, if reason did not furnish a rule of conduct. 
Now man's rational character fits him for society in a double 
way. 1 (i) It enables him to see his own interests, not as some- 
thing apart from, but in relation to, the common weal. (2) It 
enables him to apprehend and desire the Good, qua Good, 
quite independently of the question as to whose Good it may 
be. 2 Thus, "whoever determines his Judgment and his Will 
by Right Reason, must agree with all others who judge accord- 
ing to Right Reason in the same matter." 3 Hence, to use 
Cumberland's own expression, "the fundamental cornerstone 
of the Temple of Concord is laid by Nature." 

In any system of Ethics, it is of course necessary to dis- 
tinguish between the (objective) 'end' of moral action and the 
♦motive' of the individual agent. We have already seen, in 
the Introduction, what the ' end ' dictated by Right Reason is, 
and we shall have to consider it more at length later ; but it is 
important for us here to ask more particularly than we have 
yet done, regarding the motive of the individual agent — i.e., 
whether, and how, he can directly will the ' common good.' 
Here, again, our author's utterances are confusing. For in- 
stance, in Chap, ii, he says: "For universal benevolence is 
the spring and source of every act of innocence and fidelity, of 
humanity and gratitude, and indeed of all the virtues by which 
property and commerce are maintained." 4 But when later, in 
the next chapter, Cumberland attempts to explain how man 
can will the common good, he rests the argument mainly upon 

1 This will appear from what follows regarding the motive of the individual 
agent, 

2 It will readily be seen that this second function of Right Reason is hardly 
consistent with the principles of the system. 

8 See p. 107. 4 See pp. 114, 115. 



I.] RICHARD CUMBERLAND. 25 

the rational nature of man ; and proposes to demonstrate the 
possibility of altruistic conduct a priori to those who acknowl- 
edge the nature of the will to consist in " the consent of the 
mind with the judgment of the understanding, concerning 
things agreeing among themselves." 1 Since the understand- 
ing is able to judge what is 'good' for others, as well as for 
the agent himself, there is no reason why one cannot act in a 
purely altruistic way. Just what Cumberland means here will 
be seen more clearly by referring to what he says 2 regarding 
Hobbes's contention that we first desire things, and then call 
them 'good.' Cumberland holds, on the contrary, "that things 
are first judged to be good, and that they are afterwards de- 
sired only so far as they seem good." 

This, of course, is all unsatisfactory. From a general state- 
ment of the universality of a certain degree of benevolence, we 
have passed to a bit of more than questionable psychology, 
used to explain the possibility of altruistic conduct. But 
Cumberland does not always attempt to rationalize the matter 
in this way. Somewhat earlier in the treatise, 3 he attempts to 
show how altruistic feelings would naturally arise and be fos- 
tered, not only among men, but also among the higher animals. 
We may omit as irrelevant the first two considerations urged 
and pass to the third, which is, that " the motion of the blood 
and heart, which is necessary to life, is befriended by love, 
desire, hope, and joy, especially when conversant about a great 
good." But a good known to extend to the most possible will 
by that very fact be recognized as the greatest. Hence 
benevolent affections will conduce to the preservation of man 
or animal, as the case may be. A fourth argument is " that 
animals are incited to endeavor the propagation of their own 
species by the force of the same causes which preserve the life 
of every individual, so that these two are connected by [a] tie 
evidently natural." 4 The details of the argument are not par- 
ticularly convincing. The important point is : Cumberland 
argues that altruism comes in with sexual love and the parental 

1 See p. 173. 2 See p. 168. 

8 See p. 122 et seq. 4 See p. 128. 



26 ENGLISH UTILITARIANISM. [Chap. 

instinct to protect offspring. Having once arisen, there is no 
reason why it may not extend ever so much further. 

But in the latter part of the treatise, 1 there is an interesting 
passage which should not be neglected. The author says : 
" No one does truly observe the law unless he sincerely pro- 
pose the same end with the legislator. But, if he directly and 
constantly aim at this end, it is no diminution to the sincerity 
of his obedience that, at the instigation of his own happiness, 
he first perceived that his sovereign commanded him to respect 
a higher end." There is a suggestion here that the individual 
first comes to act in an (objectively) altruistic way, because he 
finds that it conduces to his own happiness ; but, this habit 
having been established, he comes to act for the common weal 
without any thought of self. This doctrine will be found 
clearly worked out in the case of two, at least, of Paley's pre- 
decessors, i.e., Gay and Tucker. 

From the above it will be seen that, while Cumberland's 
view of the nature of man is in striking contrast to that of 
Hobbes, and in substantial agreement with that of Grotius, his 
treatment of the motive of the individual is rather vague and 
unsatisfactory. It is difficult to say whether, according to our 
author, moral action is ever prompted by purely disinterested 
benevolence or not. To be sure, all discussions of the kind 
are likely enough to end in misunderstanding, because the 
< egoism ' and the ' altruism ' of which we speak with so much 
confidence are themselves more or less of the nature of abstrac- 
tions. Granted that the good of the individual is inextricably 
connected with the good of society in certain respects, why 
should we expect to find the * self -regarding ' and the ' other- 
regarding ' affections clearly differentiated ? If Cumberland 
had contented himself with showing that, in the case of beings 
endowed with sympathy, ' egoism ' and ' altruism ' must often 
coincide, we should have had no reason to complain of his 
treatment. But this he did not do. To what an extent he 
was capable of confusion on this- point, may be seen by refer- 
ring to the more than paradoxical passage in the Introduction, 2 

1 See p. 275. 2 Not previously quoted. See p. 30. 



I.] RICHARD CUMBERLAND. 27 

in which he attempts to prove that he who performs good 
actions in gratitude for benefits already received, shows less 
generosity than one who is moved to action "by the hope 
only of good." The relation of Cumberland's biological proof 
of altruism to evolutionary theory is obvious. At the same 
time, it should be noted that his position here is not inconsist- 
ent with his essentially static view of the Nature of Things. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE ETHICAL SYSTEM OF RICHARD CUMBER^ 
LAND {Continued). 

HAVING considered somewhat at length Cumberland's 
view of the nature of man, we shall now turn to the 
second main division of our exposition, which depends essentially 
upon the above, i.e., his doctrine of the Good. Although the 
author is particularly concerned to show the eternity and im- 
mutability of the Laws of Nature, this jural aspect of the 
system, which will be considered later, must not blind us to 
the fact that for Cumberland there is nothing corresponding 
to Kant's < categorical imperative.' On this point he is quite 
explicit, as might be expected from the general character of 
the system. He says: "These propositions are called practi- 
cal, nor is it necessary that they should be pronounced in the 
form of a gerund, 'this or that ought to be done,' as some 
school-men teach; because that fitness which is expressed by 
a gerund wants explanation." 1 The form of the propositions 
makes no particular difference, as the author goes on to show. 
They may be given: (i) as statements of fact, i.e., that certain 
things necessarily conduce both to the ' common good ' and to 
that of the individual agent; or (2) as commands, i.e., as Laws 
of Nature; or (3) as ' gerunds,' in the sense indicated above. 
Evidently we have here to do with an Ethics of the Good, and 
not with a Duty ethics. 

But what is the Good ? Cumberland has much to say re- 
garding the good of each and the good of all, ' natural ' good 
and 'moral' good; but he nowhere tells us as definitely as we 
could wish exactly what the Good is. It is a little curious 
that, just after remarking that " it is of the last conse- 
quence to establish a well-grounded and irrefragable notion of 
Good," 2 he should make no serious attempt to do so, but in- 
dulge in a number of characteristic criticisms of Hobbes. 

1 See p. 180. 2 See p. 169. 



RICHARD CUMBERLAND. 29 

Throughout the treatise Cumberland is concerned to oppose 
the two following related views of Hobbes regarding the Good : 
(1) that the [natural] Good for each man is merely what he 
wants; and (2) that, before the establishment of the state and 
the enacting of civil laws, there is no < measure ' of the Good. 

We have already seen that, in opposition to Hobbes's doc- 
trine that we call a thing good because we want it, Cumberland 
holds that we want it because first we believe it to be good. 1 
As regards the view that in a ' state of nature ' there is no 
' common measure,' the author somewhat naively asserts that 
of course there is, — the Nature of Things. 2 In the same 
paragraph, however, he explicitly says: " Whatsoever pro- 
position points out the true cause of preservation does at 
the same time show what is true good." Later in the treatise, 
Good is defined as: "that which preserves, or enlarges and 
perfects, the faculties of any one thing or of several." And a 
few lines further on: "that is good to man which preserves or 
enlarges the powers of the mind and body, or of either, with- 
out prejudice to the other." 3 

The first passage quoted may sound like Hobbes; but of 
course what Cumberland has in mind, when he speaks of pres- 
ervation, is the preservation, not primarily of the individual, 
but of society, — the < health of the social organism/ in Mr. 
Stephen's phrase. Another important difference is that 
Cumberland's idea of the Good, from this point of view, in- 
cludes perfection as well as preservation. Indeed, the empha- 
sis is certainly to be laid upon perfection. Man is not merely 
a bundle of egoistic appetites, but a being essentially rational, 
— a personality to be developed. 

But in chapter v, we have an example of the other set of 
passages, even more numerous, which might be cited as show- 
ing that Cumberland's ideal was that of ordinary Hedonism. 

1 Connected with this is the question regarding the permanence of the Good. 
Cumberland holds that " Hobbes's fiction that good and evil are changeable is per- 
fectly inconsistent with the necessary and immutable causes which he everywhere 
asserts of the being and preservation of man " (p. 62). It is to be doubted if this 
is at all conclusive against Hobbes. 

2 See p. 62. 3 See p. 165. 



30 ENGLISH UTILITARIANISM. [Chap. 

" I proceed more fully to explain the common, which also I call 
the public good. By these words I understand the aggregate 
or sum of all those good things which either we can contribute 
towards, or are necessary to, the happiness of all rational beings, 
considered as collected into one body, each in his proper order." 1 
The ' rational ' beings referred to are God and all men. Ani- 
mals are placed practically on the same level with the vegetable 
world. " The perfection 2 of these things is not properly, — 
at least not ultimately, — sought after; their use and concur- 
rence with our actions towards the good of rational beings is 
the thing intended." 

As it is not clear, — thus far, at any rate, — in what terms 
Cumberland would have denned the Good, if he had been 
forced to be more exact, it becomes important to consider his 
treatment of happiness. This is decidedly careless, and some- 
times ' circular,' i.e., the Good is frequently denned in terms of 
happiness, while happiness is sometimes 3 defined as ' the pos- 
session of good things.' Indeed, Cumberland occasionally uses 
the words interchangeably even in the same sentence. How- 
ever, allowing for his careless use of language, with which 
we are already familiar, his theory seems to be that human 
happiness results largely from action, particularly from the 
exercise of one's intellectual powers. For instance, in treat- 
ing of the rewards that attend observance of the Laws of 
Nature, he speaks of " that pleasure or part of our happiness 
which is necessarily contained in such natural employment of 
the human faculties as leads to the best end ... for all exer- 
cise of natural powers, especially of the highest order, in which 
we neither miss our aim nor turn out of the direct road, is 
naturally pleasant." 4 Now freedom from evil or uneasiness 
may depend upon external circumstances; no other pleasures 
than the so-called ' active ' ones take their rise from within 
ourselves. Hence this is the only happiness to which moral 

1 See p. 202. The title of this long and important chapter is : " Of the Law 
of Nature and its Obligation." 

2 Note the use of the word. 3 See, e.g., p. 43. 

4 See p. 100. Cf. p. 2ii, where Cumberland emphasizes the pleasures of suc- 
cess in one's undertakings. 



II.] RICHARD CUMBERLAND. 3 1 

philosophy directs us. 1 But again, Cumberland says : " I have 
no inclination very curiously to inquire whether the happiness 
of man be an aggregate of the most vigorous actions, which 
can proceed from our faculties ; or rather a most grateful sense 
of them, joined with tranquillity and joy, which by some is 
called pleasure. These are inseparably connected, and both 
necessary to happiness." 2 This is one of the most ambiguous 
of the passages making for hedonism. 3 It will be noticed, how- 
ever, that < tranquillity ' is distinctly stated to be an essential 
constituent of pleasure. 

As regards the nature, or rather the cause, of this tranquillity, 
the author speaks earlier in the treatise of an ' essential part ' 
of happiness, i.e., "that inward peace which arises from an 
uniform wisdom, always agreeing with itself." 4 If we act dif- 
ferently toward others from what we do toward ourselves, we 
have the discomfort that attends any inconsistency. But, in 
addition, "that great joy is also wanting which arises in a 
benevolent mind from a sense of the felicity of others." Of 
course, tranquillity does not depend entirely upon ' consistency ' 
in thought and action. We saw but a moment ago that it de- 
pended materially upon external things. It also depends largely, 
according to Cumberland, upon the consciousness of having 
deserved well of our fellows. But it is characteristic of our 
author to insist upon the partial dependence of tranquillity upon 
having acted consistently. 

So far, then, happiness is seen to consist principally in 
(1) the pleasures attending our normal, particularly our intel- 
lectual, activities; (2) tranquillity, which depends partly upon 
(a) external circumstances, (b) the feeling that we have been 
< consistent ' in thought and action, (c) the consciousness that 
we have acted for the common weal; and (3) the pleasure which 
results from a knowledge of the happiness of others. 

What shall be said, then, with regard to Cumberland's view 

1 This passage is not to be too much insisted on. By itself, it is misleading. 

2 See p. 209. 

3 Strictly speaking, of course, it leaves open the question as to what terms we 
shall use (hedonistic or otherwise) in defining the Good. 4 See p. 44. 



32 ENGLISH UTILITARIANISM. [Chap. 

of the Good in general ? We have seen that he speaks, now in 
terms of < preservation' and 'perfection/ now in terms of 'happi- 
ness.' In one passage, while maintaining the somewhat trite 
thesis that 'virtue is its own reward,' he says: "I care 
not in this argument to distinguish between the health of mind 
and the consciousness or enjoyment thereof by reflection, since 
nature has so intimately united these two, that the free exer- 
cise of the virtues and the perception or inward sense thereof 
are inseparable." x A statement like this must put us on 
our guard against expecting too definite an answer to the ques- 
tion which we are considering. ' Happiness ' always attends 
' perfection ' ; ' perfection ' is necessary in order that we may 
attain < happiness.' Practically, then, it makes little difference 
which we say, — and Cumberland's aim was preeminently a 
practical one, as we have seen. I do not believe that it is 
possible dogmatically to decide on either interpretation. We 
should be forcing a distinction, important for us, upon an 
author who regarded it with frank indifference. Indeed, it 
would be much truer to say that both happiness and perfection, 
in our understanding of the words, are included in our author's 
conception of the Good. 

It should be noticed, however, that Cumberland's actual 
treatment of ' happiness ' is a good deal clearer than his treat- 
ment of ' perfection ' ; and there is always the lurking possibil- 
ity that the latter may be regarded as of such importance, be- 
cause it is a necessary means to the former. The general 
impression which the system gives one certainly is that, on the 
whole, it is hedonistic. At the same time, it would be sheer 
misrepresentation to hold that it is consistently so. It is much 
better to let the two principles, which we now regard as logi- 
cally distinct, stand side by side, recognizing, however, that 
greater emphasis is laid upon * happiness ' than upon * per- 
fection.' 

This comparatively vague treatment of ' perfection ' has led 
Professor Sidgwick to hold that Cumberland "does not even 
define perfection so as strictly to exclude from it the notion of 

1 See p. 265. 



II.] RICHARD CUMBERLAND. 33 

moral perfection, or virtue, and save his explanation of moral- 
ity from an obvious logical circle." * I am inclined to think 
that, for once, Professor Sidgwick is wrong in his interpreta- 
tion. As Dr. Spaulding has shown, 2 the ' perfection ' referred 
to is a 'perfection of mind and body,' 3 which is explained as 
the ' development of their powers.' 4 This will be plain if we 
keep in mind what Cumberland says regarding * naturally ' good 
things. These are defined as (1) those which adorn and cheer 
the mind, and (2) those which preserve and increase the powers 
of the body. 5 

We shall now have to notice the distinction (just referred to) 
which Cumberland makes between what is ' naturally ' and 
what is 'morally' good. This has been ignored hitherto, be- 
cause it is likely to lead to confusion. What things ' naturally ' 
good are, we have just seen. On the other hand, "only volun- 
tary actions conformable to some law, especially that of Nature," 
are i morally ' good. It is quite misleading, when Cumberland 
insists that ' natural ' good is more extensive than ' moral ' good. 
It is not a matter of more or less, but of what we may call, 
for convenience, the 'substantive' and the 'adjective' use of 
the word 'good.' Certain things, once for all, do, according 
to the eternal nature of things, conduce to man's preservation, 
perfection, and happiness. These are ' naturally ' good, or, 
as we now prefer to say, they constitute the Good. On the 
other hand, those ' voluntary actions ' which conduce to the 
Good, and so fulfil the Laws of Nature, are called ' morally ' 
good. This is a particularly unfortunate use of language, for 
it looks at first as if Ethics had to do only with the ' morally ' 
good. This is so far from being true that ' natural ' good is the 
ultimate, not that which is ' morally ' good ; otherwise Cum- 
berland would be involved in a manifest circle at the very out- 
set. But while Ethics must needs begin with a consideration 
of ' natural good,' — ' the Good,' as we shall call it, — it is 
not equally concerned with all that would ideally go to consti- 

1 See Hist, of Ethics, p. 173. 2 See Richard Cumberland, p. 55 et sea. 

8 See p. 305. 4 See p. 165 et sea., already referred to. 

5 See p. 203. 



34 ENGLISH UTILITARIANISM. [Chap. 

tute the Good. Cumberland himself, in the first chapter of 
the treatise, 1 calls our attention to the usefulness of the Stoics' 
distinction between things in our power and things out of our 
power. Now Ethics, from the nature of the case, must be 
practically limited in its scope to a consideration of things in 
our power. At the same time, to limit the Good to things in 
our power would be obviously stultifying, whether we accept 
preservation, perfection, or happiness (in our sense of the 
word) as the criterion. The only type of Ethics which can do 
that is the 'duty Ethics/ the Ethics of the 'good will'; and, 
however heterogeneous the elements may be that enter into 
Cumberland's system, he surely is not affiliated to the school 
referred to. 

So far we have been considering the Good quite in general. 
As a matter of fact, of course, when the Laws of Nature are 
under consideration, Cumberland has in mind, not the good 
of any individual or class merely, but the good of all, — or 
rather, to be more exact, the good of the greatest number. In- 
deed, that this good of the whole is greater than the (hypotheti- 
cal) good of the isolated part, and therefore the 'greatest end' of 
human action, Cumberland practically puts among self-evident 
truths. 2 But, as he says, " the good of the collective body is 
no other than the greatest which accrues to all, or to the major 
part of the whole." 3 Although he speaks of society as an 
organic whole, — particularly when he is concerned to show 
that the good of each ultimately coincides with the good of all 
others, — he never loses sight of the claims of the individual, 
as some modern theorists, standing on much the same ground, 
are rather inclined to do. 

It is to be remembered that the ' greatest end ' is nothing 
less than the 'joint felicity of all rationals,' so that the happi- 
ness or glory of God is included, as well as the happiness of all 
men. If there be question as to the ' parts ' of the ' greatest 
end,' and their 'order,' we are told: "that part of the end will 
be superior which is grateful to the nature of the more perfect 
being. So that the glory of God is chief, then follows the 

1 See p. 63. 2 See p. 97. 3 See p. 60. 



II.] RICHARD CUMBERLAND. 35 

happiness of many good men, and inferior to this is the happi- 
ness of any particular person." * 

Thus far we have neglected what Cumberland himself may 
very well have regarded as most important, i.e., the jural 
aspect of the system. As we have already seen, he begins 
with an elaborate discussion concerning the Laws of Nature. 
It did not seem best to follow his order of exposition, because 
this appeared to have been dictated in part by controversial 
considerations. Moreover, it is important to see that, — from 
our present point of view, at least, — the system stands alone, 
without the assistance of this scaffolding of Natural Laws. 2 
At the same time one would have but a very inadequate idea 
either of the external form of the system or of the author's 
actual application of his unifying principle, without a knowl- 
edge of the substance of what he says regarding Laws of 
Nature. To this subject, then, we shall proceed. It will form 
the third, and last, main division of our exposition. 

Hobbes had spoken much of Laws of Nature, but in a sense 
wholly different from that ordinarily attaching to the expres- 
sion, as used by his contemporaries, — indeed, in a sense not 
easy to define, as we have seen. Cumberland returns to the 
original conception of Natural Laws, 3 and is intensely in 
earnest in maintaining their existence. 

It will be remembered that our author discards the doctrine 
of « innate ideas.' We must, then, learn the Laws of Nature 
from experience. How does this take place? In early child- 
hood, we act in a practically purposeless way until we come to 
recognize the different effects of different kinds of actions, not 
only upon ourselves, but upon others as well. " Hence," as 
Cumberland naively says, " we draw some conclusions concern- 
ing actions acceptable to God, but many more concerning such 
as are advantageous and disadvantageous to men." 4 When, in 

1 See p. 280. 

2 Of course this is not intended to beg the question as to the ultimate validity 
of a Utilitarian system. 

3 As held, e.g., by Grotius. * See p. 179. 



36 ENGLISH UTILITARIANISM. [Chap. 

maturer years, these conclusions come to be accurately ex- 
pressed in a general form, they are called < Practical Propo- 
sitions.' We have already seen that the form of these 
propositions is immaterial. They may be expressed (i) as 
statements of fact, (2) as commands [laws], or (3) as ' gerunds.' 
Notwithstanding this, however, in the main body of the work, 
Cumberland almost always speaks of Practical Propositions as 
Laws, and is particularly concerned* to show that they are 
technically such. 

Hobbes had insisted that a Law must be clearly promulgated 
by a competent authority, i.e., by one having power to enforce 
obedience ; and had denied that the so-called Laws of Nature 
possessed either of these requisites. Cumberland, on the 
other hand, while accepting Hobbes' s definition of a Law, 
attempts to show that the Laws of Nature are ' Laws ' in pre- 
cisely Hobbes' s sense of the word. At the beginning of chapter 
v, he defines the [general] Law of Nature as " a proposition 
proposed to the observation of, or impressed upon, the mind 
with sufficient clearness, by the Nature of Things, from the 
will of the First Cause, which points out that possible action 
of a rational agent, which will chiefly promote the common 
good, and by which only the entire happiness of particular 
persons can be obtained." 2 The former part of the definition 
contains the ' precept,' the latter the < sanction ' ; and the mind 
receives the ' impression ' of both from the Nature of Things. 
Neither words nor any arbitrary signs whatever are essential 
to a Law. Given a knowledge of actions and their conse- 
quences, we have all that is needed. 

With regard to the clearness that is to be looked for in the 
Laws of Nature, Cumberland says : " That proposition is pro- 
posed or imprinted by the objects with sufficient plainness, 
whose terms and their natural connection are so exposed to the 
senses and thoughts, by obvious and common experience, that 
the mind of an adult person, not laboring under any impedi- 
ment, if it will attend or take notice, may easily observe it." 2 
There are such propositions. They are analogous to the fol- 

1 See p. 189. 2 See p. 192. 



II.] RICHARD CUMBERLAND. 37 

lowing: Men may be killed by a profuse loss of blood, by 
suffocation, by want of food, etc. 

These propositions, then, are given in human experience 
with sufficient clearness. Is there any power behind them, 
capable of enforcing obedience ? The very fact that certain 
consequences, good or bad, apparently always ensue upon cer- 
tain classes of actions, would of itself suggest that this is the 
case. But we can go further. The Law of Nature, as above 
stated, points out the way to the common good ; God must 
desire the common good ; therefore these [derived] propositions 
must be regarded as Laws of God, — in which case there can 
be no question as to the ' competent authority.' The good or 
evil consequences which result from actions, must be regarded 
as ' sanctions,' divinely ordained. In a word, these Practical 
Propositions, derived from experience, are not only Laws, but 
Laws in the completest possible sense. 

We are now quite prepared to understand Cumberland's 
notion of Obligation. He says : " Obligation is that act of a 
legislator by which he declares that actions conformable to his 
law are necessary to those for whom the law is made. An 
action is then understood to be necessary to a rational agent, 
when it is certainly one of the causes necessarily required to 
that happiness which he naturally, and consequently neces- 
sarily, desires." x Obligation is regarded as perfectly immut- 
able, for it could change only with the Nature of Things. 2 
That anything in what is so vaguely termed the Nature of 
Things 3 could change, Cumberland did not for a moment 
suppose. 

In treating of obligation, the author sometimes uses language 
which might suggest determinism. It is to be remembered, 
however, that he is an uncompromising libertarian, — so far, at 
least, as it is possible to define the position of one so little 
given to metaphysical speculation or the precise use of meta- 

1 See p. 233; cf. p. 206. 2 See p. 226. 

3 This is a good case to illustrate the ambiguity of the expression, ' Nature of 
Things.' Does the 'immutable Nature of Things' mean certain physical and 
other laws which remain constant ? or does the ' immutability ' extend to the 
natures of particular classes of beings ? 



38 ENGLISH UTILITARIANISM. [Chap. 

physical language. By the ' necessity ' and ' immutability ' of 
the Laws of Nature, he simply means that, if certain acts are 
performed, certain consequences will necessarily ensue, now 
and always. That the acts themselves, in the particular case, 
are determined, he would deny. We have already seen that 
human error is explained by Cumberland in the same way as 
by Descartes, — i.e., as resulting from a rash use of our Free 
Will, where we arbitrarily assent to that which is not clear and 
distinct. 

It might seem highly improbable that so prominent and 
zealous a churchman as Cumberland, in treating of the ' sanc- 
tion ' of the Law of Nature, would fail to insist upon rewards 
and punishments after death ; yet such is the case. In the 
Introduction he states that he has abstained from ' theological 
questions/ and has attempted to prove his position from 
'reason' and 'experience.' 1 The treatise as a whole bears out 
this statement fairly well, it being understood that by 
' theological questions ' Cumberland means those pertaining to 
revelation. In one passage, he says : " Among these rewards 
[attending obedience to the Laws of Nature] is that happy 
immortality which natural reason promises to attend the minds 
of good men, when separated from the body"; 2 but this is 
almost the only instance in which he directly refers to the 
future life in connection with the ' sanction,' and it is signifi- 
cant, perhaps, that even here he does not refer to future punish- 
ments. Cumberland's reticence on this subject is by no 
means difficult to explain, and it argues nothing against 
his orthodoxy. In the first place, as we have seen, he 
wished to confute Hobbes on his own ground. Moreover, he 
doubtless knew perfectly well that, for those who believed in 
immortality, rewards and punishments after death would be 
regarded as constituting by far the most important part of the 
sanction, whereas, to those who were skeptical in the matter, 
such considerations would not appeal at all. 

But what Cumberland lost by confining himself to a con- 
sideration of the consequences of actions that might be expected 

1 See p. 34. 2 See p. 267. 



II.] RICHARD CUMBERLAND. 39 

to ensue in this present life, he endeavored to make up by dis- 
tinguishing sharply between (i) < immediate ' [internal] and (2) 
< mediate' [external] consequences. The former are empha- 
sized considerably at the expense of the latter, doubtless for 
the reason that here one might plausibly claim greater cer- 
tainty. The wicked may, in particular cases, appear to flourish 
in our own day, as they did in David's time ; but the 'external ' 
consequences of actions are by no means the only ones. By 
the ' internal ' consequences, Cumberland might seem to mean 
simply the approval or disapproval of conscience, but this is by 
no means the case. He says : " The immediate connection 
between every man's greatest happiness of mind, that is in his 
power, and the actions which he performs to promote most 
effectually the common good of God and men, consists in this : 
that these are the very actions, in the exercise and inward 
consciousness whereof every man's happiness (as far as it is 
in his own power) consists." This is supposed to be " after 
the same manner as we perceive a connection between the 
health and unimpaired powers of the body and its actions." 1 
The case, then, is regarded as analogous to the connection 
between feeling well and being well physically. If this seem 
like begging the question, it is to be observed further that 
man can find free scope for the varied activities (particularly 
mental) in which his happiness so largely consists, only by 
acting for the common weal. 

As regards the ' mediate ' effects, or external consequences 
of actions, Cumberland acknowledges that we have here to do, 
not with certainty, but with probability merely. Still it is a 
very high degree of probability. In the long run, actions tend- 
ing to promote the common weal must lead to a maximum of 
possible happiness for the individual agent; actions against 
the common weal, to a maximum of possible unhappiness. If 
advantages are not to be procured in this way, i.e., by acting 
for the common weal, they come under the head of ' things not 
in our power.' The Divine moral government of human affairs 
(here and now) is referred to as tending still further to justify 
the author's position. 

1 See p. 207. 



40 ENGLISH UTILITARIANISM. [Chap. 

The treatment of this subject is considerably perplexed, 
partly owing to the author's attempt to avoid the appearance 
of harboring egoism in his system, — an attempt, it should be 
added, which is not uniformly successful. From the contro- 
versial point of view, he doubtless had good reason to in- 
sist upon the greater importance of the internal sanction, 
and, indeed, his general position may very well be in accord 
with human experience; but it is to be doubted if the dis- 
tinction will bear the weight which is actually put upon it in 
the treatise. For, by employing it, Cumberland attempted to 
prove the complete sufficiency of the * sanction,' as given in 
the present life, for every moral agent whatsoever. 

It will be seen that the whole account of * obligation' 
brings out, in clear relief, the egoistic elements in the system. 
Cumberland's doctrine of obligation (so far as his explicit treat- 
ment is concerned) is not essentially different from Paley's, 
though it must be conceded that it is expressed in a much less 
offensive way. One may surmise that this appearance of ego- 
ism would have been more effectually guarded against, had it 
not been for the fact that the jural treatment of morality, in- 
volving emphasis on reward and punishment, was made neces- 
sary by the author's desire to fight Hobbes on his own ground. 

Cumberland's deduction of the particular Laws of Nature 
from the general Law, which we have thus far been considering, 
is by no means elaborate. It is contained in the three short 
chapters: vi, " Of Those Things which are contained in the 
General Law of Nature"; vii, "Of the Original of Dominion, 
and the Moral Virtues"; viii, " Of the Moral Virtues in Par- 
ticular." 1 The last chapter, ix, "Corollaries," as the name 
might suggest, does not properly belong to the systematic part 
of the treatise. In the pages immediately following we shall 
notice the principal points made in the three chapters first 
mentioned. 

1 The first five chapters are: i, "Of the Nature of Things"; ii, "Of Human 
Nature and Right Reason"; iii, "Of Natural Good"; iv, "Of the Practical 
Dictates of Reason"; v, "Of the Law of Nature and its Obligation." These 
titles, however, as already said, do not give a very definite idea of the nature of 
the contents of the several chapters. 



II.] RICHARD CUMBERLAND. 41 

Chapter vi, " Of Those Things contained in the General Law 
of Nature," is very short, and even so contains a good deal 
that has been treated before. This is rather disappointing, 
for it is just here that we should naturally look for the most 
important part of the < deduction.' Two questions are pro- 
posed by the author: (1) What things are comprehended in 
the common good ? and (2) What actions tend to promote it ? 
The answer to the first question contains nothing new or to 
the present purpose. As regards actions tending to promote 
the common good, Cumberland divides them into classes, each 
corresponding to the particular ' faculty ' of the mind supposed to 
be principally involved. Hence we have (1) acts of the Under- 
standing, (2) acts of the Will and Affections, or acts of the 
body determined by the Will. Under the former head Cum- 
berland treats of Prudence, which he divides into (a) Constancy, 
and (b) Moderation. Constancy, again, may manifest itself 
either as Fortitude or as Patience; while Moderation implies 
Integrity and Diligence, or Industry. 

Passing to ' acts of the Will ' enjoined by the Law of Nature, 
these are found to be all included in ' the most extensive and 
operative benevolence.' The author says: "It belongs to the 
same benevolence to endeavor that nothing be done contrary 
to the common good, and to correct and amend it if there has; 
hence Equity [or Justice] is an essential branch of this virtue." 1 
This Universal Benevolence also includes Innocence, Gentle- 
ness, Repentance, Restitution, and Self-denial; and, further, 
Candor, Fidelity, and Gratitude. " In these few heads," says 
Cumberland, " are contained the primary special Laws of Na- 
ture and the fundamental principles of all virtues and all 
societies." 

In this connection Cumberland asserts that some actions 
may be regarded as morally * indifferent,' but the term is mis- 
leading. Those actions without which it is impossible to obtain 
the end proposed are 'necessary'; those to which there are 
others equivalent, i.e., equally calculated to conduce to the 
common weal, are termed 'indifferent.' Every action, then, 

1 See p. 309. 



42 



ENGLISH UTILITARIANISM. 



[Chap. 



may very well have a moral character; and yet it may be no 
more efficacious in promoting the ' greatest end ' than certain 
other actions. Accordingly it may, in this sense only, be 
termed ' indifferent.' These cases, we are told, leave room for 
the greatest individual freedom ; also for positive laws contract- 
ing such liberty within narrower bounds. 

It will be seen that, however original and important may 
have been Cumberland's idea that the particular laws of moral 
action, or Laws of Nature, could be deduced from one princi- 
ple, viz., that requiring of all moral agents conduct that should 
conduce to the common good; his < deduction' of these particu- 
lar Laws thus far contains little or nothing calling for remark, 
unless it be the naive application of a more than usually crude 
'faculty psychology,' where he distinguishes between acts of 
the understanding and those of the will and affections. This, 
however, is not relevant to the present discussion. 

The two remaining chapters, vii, " Of the Original of Do- 
minion and the Moral Virtues," and viii, " Of the Moral Vir- 
tues in Particular," treat incidentally of a great variety of 
topics, but are principally concerned with the Laws of Nature 
which have to do with the distribution and tenure of property. 
It does not seem best to follow the author's order of exposition, 
particularly as a matter touched upon in the earlier part of the 
book should be treated in connection with this subject. 

It will be remembered that Hobbes had maintained, though 
not in so many words, that ' self-preservation is the first law 
of nature ' ; and also, as regards property, that in a state of 
nature each had a ' right ' to all, — which, of course, means 
only that each had a ' right ' to all that he could get and keep. 1 
Otherwise stated, self-preservation (or the conscious seeking 
of one's own happiness) was regarded not only as a ( right,' but 
as the only original spring of action, while brute force was 
regarded as the only criterion. Possession was te/z-tenths of 
the law; though, of course, this possession on the part of the 
strongest could be only of the most temporary character, owing 
to the (approximate) ' original equality ' of men. 

1 As a matter of fact, this hypothetical ' right to all things ' extended not only 
to the material good things of life, but to everything whatever. 



II.] RICHARD CUMBERLAND. 43 

As regards the former, self-preservation, Cumberland does 
not admit either that men have a primary and inalienable right 
to preserve themselves, or that the desire of self-preservation 
is naturally their ruling motive. He says, in chapter i, " Of 
the Nature of Things " : "It cannot be known that any one 
has a right to preserve himself, unless it be known that this 
will contribute to the common good, or that it is at least con- 
sistent with it. . . . A right even to self-defence cannot be 
understood without respect had to the concessions of the Law 
of Nature, which consults the good of all." 1 This is nothing if 
not explicit ; but it is to be noticed that we are here concerned 
only with the question as to what is to be regarded as the 
ultimate ethical principle. As regards our mode of action, 
this very ' good of all,' which is the ethical ultimate, demands 
that (in all ordinary circumstances) " every one should study 
his own preservation, and further perfection." 2 The degree 
to which one should subordinate one's own interests to the 
common good, depends, of course, upon circumstances. That 
it may extend even to the sacrifice of one's life, Cumberland 
would have been the last to deny. In such a case he would 
have maintained his general thesis, that the good of all and the 
good of each coincide, by insisting upon the benefits already 
received by the individual at the hands of society. 3 We have 
already seen that this does not really prove his point. 

Passing now to Cumberland's deduction of the right to per- 
sonal property, we must remember that he was confronted with 
Hobbes's doctrine that, in a state of nature, each had a ' right ' 
to all. His argument, which practically is, that society could 
not exist without proprietorship in the case of at least some 
things, however sound it may be in itself, can hardly be 
called the conclusive answer to Hobbes that he himself sup- 
posed it to be. The difference between the two was primarily 
regarding the nature of man, and not so much regarding the 
conditions under which society could exist. For it was just 
Hobbes's contention that society could not exist in what he 
chose to call a ' state of nature ' ; hence the absolute need of 

1 See p. 67. 2 See p. 69. 3 See, e.g., p. 27. 



44 ENGLISH UTILITARIANISM. [Chap. 

founding the state, and such a state as the < Leviathan ' 
that he described. The irrelevance of a good many of the 
author's particular criticisms of Hobbes cannot but strike the 
reader. 

The controversial part of the treatise, however, is not that 
with which we are mainly concerned, so we pass on to Cum- 
berland's own deduction of the right to property. It is some- 
what important to notice the exact form of the argument. "It 
has been proved," he says, " that in the common happiness are 
contained both the highest honor of God, and the perfections 
both of the minds and bodies of men; moreover, it is well 
known from the Nature of Things that, in order to these ends, 
are necessarily required both many actions of men, and uses of 
things which cannot, at the same time, be subservient to other 
uses. From whence it follows that men, who are obliged to 
promote the common good, are likewise necessarily obliged to 
consent that the use of things and labor of persons, so far as 
they are necessary to particular men to enable them to promote 
the public good, should be so granted them, that they may not 
lawfully be taken from them, whilst the aforesaid necessity 
continues ; that is, that those things should, at least during such 
time, become their property and be called their own. But such 
necessity continuing, by reason of the continuance of like times 
and circumstances, a perpetual property, or right to the use of 
things, and to the assistance of persons necessary, will follow 
to each person during life." 1 

It is to be noticed that there are two parts in this de- 
duction : (i) the argument for the original partition of goods ; 
(2) the argument for the permanence of that partition. 2 These 
should be carefully distinguished. It is precisely in the con- 
fusion of the two that the obscurity of Cumberland's treatment 
of property lies. 

(1) As regards the (original) temporary right to the use of 
things and the services of other people, there seems to be no 

1 See p. 313. Cf. pp. 64 et seq. This is put in the form of a Law on p. 315, 
which, of course, involves nothing but a purely verbal change. 

2 Involving inheritance, of course. 









II.] RICHARD CUMBERLAND. 45 

difficulty. Without some external things, the individual cannot 
exist, still less be of any service to his fellow-men. Moreover, 
" the same nourishment and necessary clothing which preserves 
the life of one man cannot at the same time perform the same 
office for any other." Hence, in practice, some of the things 
essential to the maintenance of life must be divided in order 
to be used at all. This applies absolutely, however, only to 
food and clothing. Cumberland certainly has a great deal 
more than these in mind. Indeed, he shows that in a state of 
nature, preceding the complete division of things, frequent dis- 
putes would arise "where it was not very evident what was 
necessary for each." 1 These, and also the sloth of those 
' neglecting to cultivate the common fields,' would inevitably, 
he thinks, lead to the further division. 

(2) But this division, having once been made, is final, owing 
to the assumed continuance of ' like times and circumstances.' 
The too easy transition from (1) to (2) is the weak point in the 
deduction. Some division had to be made ; a certain division 
has actually been made; and the complete and abiding justice 
of this division Cumberland accepts as a matter of course. 
We need not discuss the division, he says, " because we all find 
it ready made to our hands, in a manner plainly sufficient to pro- 
cure the best end, the honor of God and the happiness of all 
men, if they be not wanting to themselves." 2 That there is 
any way radically to remove the hardships of the present dis- 
tribution (which certainly is not worse than it was in Cumber- 
land's time), one would perhaps be the last to maintain ; but 
the author's breezy optimism with regard to the felicity result- 
ing from the existing distribution, is a little amusing, in the 
light of the economic problems of the present day. The 
choice, according to his view, would seem to be between the 
present system and "violating and overturning all settled 
rights, divine and human, and endeavoring to introduce a new 
division of all property, according to the judgment or affections 
of [some] one man." 3 

1 See p. 321. 2 See p. 322, particularly the passage at the bottom of the page. 
3 See p. 323. 



46 ENGLISH UTILITARIANISM. [Chap. 

Indeed, Cumberland's argument for the existing distribution 
of wealth is curiously analogous to that of Hobbes for the 
absolute character of the then existing government. Hobbes 
had practically said : Any government is better than none; 
choose between an absolute government (the only stable one) 
and none at all. Cumberland, as we have seen, practically 
says: Some division of property had to be made; this actually 
was made; choose between this and "violating and overturning 
all settled rights." In this connection, he remarks that, with 
Grotius, he highly approves of that saying of Thucydides : " It 
is just for every one to preserve that form of government in 
the state, which has been delivered down to him." 

According to Cumberland, then, our ultimate right to that 
which we legally possess, under the existing order of things, 
depends upon the fact that a recognition of the sanctity of 
property is essential to the stability of society ; not so much 
upon the fact that our property enables us to promote the 
common good. If the latter were really the criterion, a partial 
redistribution of property every now and again might seem to 
be the inevitable consequence. My only object in referring 
to this is to call attention to the fact — somewhat important, 
as it seems to me — that Cumberland's criterion for the distri- 
bution of property applies only, or mainly, to the (hypothetical) 
original partition of the same ; not to the actual distribution 
as we now find it. And the (actual) « original partition,' surely, 
was made upon anything but ethical principles. 

With the last chapter, viii, " Of the Moral Virtues in Par- 
ticular," we are not here specially concerned, as the funda- 
mental principles have already been considered. The mode of 
treatment is sufficiently indicated by the following passage : 
" The special laws of the moral virtues may, after this manner, 
be deduced from the law of Universal Justice. There being a 
law given which fixes and preserves the rights of particular 
persons, for this end only, that the common good of all be pro- 
moted by every one, all will be laid under these two obligations, 
in order to that end: (i) To contribute to others such a share 
of those things which are committed to their trust, as may not 



II.] RICHARD CUMBERLAND. 47 

destroy that part which is necessary to themselves for the 
same end ; (2) to reserve to themselves that use of what is their 
own, as may be most advantageous to, or at least consistent 
with, the good of others." 1 Thus abstractly stated, the princi- 
ples may seem commonplace enough ; but it is characteristic 
of the best side of Cumberland's ethical theory that, in carry- 
ing them out, he preserves so true a balance between duties of 
1 giving' and duties of 'receiving.' He himself says that, if 
confusion be attributed to him by reason of his recognition of 
the two classes of duties, the confusion must be attributed to 
Nature herself. Here, again, as so often, he illustrates his 
position by reference to what we know to be the conditions 
necessary to the preservation and health of any organism. 
His deduction of the particular virtues under each class, we 
need not stop to consider. 

Although Cumberland's ethical system has been treated topi- 
cally throughout, in these two chapters, it seems desirable to 
restate, as briefly as may be, the principal results of our investi- 
gation. This is the more necessary on account of the some- 
what heterogeneous elements that enter into the system. 

I. Hobbes had regarded man as a bundle of egoistic instincts, 
and had practically denied the existence of Right Reason. 
Cumberland insists, on the other hand, that the non-rational 
side of human nature manifests altruistic as well as egoistic 
tendencies ; and also that man is essentially a rational being. 
Our sympathetic feelings are emphasized more when the author 
is thinking of society as an organic whole, while the rationality 
of man is usually brought out into strong relief when the dis- 
cussion is regarding the individual. That the existence of sym- 
pathetic feeling ' fits ' us for society is evident, of course. Our 
rationality, on the other hand, ' fits ' us for society in a double 
way: (1) It enables us to see our own good as indissolubly con- 
nected with the good of society, and so leads to objectively 
moral conduct from ultimately egoistic motives ; (2) it enables 
us to recognize and desire the Good in and for itself, — irre- 

1 See p. 329. 



48 ENGLISH UTILITARIANISM. [Chap. 

spective of the question as to whose good it may be. The 
difference between these two parts which Reason plays is im- 
portant. The second is apparently inconsistent with the gen- 
eral tendency of the system. Cumberland's view, that benevo- 
lent feeling first came into human life with sexual love and the 
parental instinct to protect the young, has been sufficiently 
noticed; as also his view that the kindly affections (re- 
garded physiologically) tend toward the conservation of the 
individual, while the contrary is true of the malevolent affec- 
tions. It should also be kept in mind that, when opposing the 
egoism of Hobbes, the author always attempts to prove, not 
simply that man is, to a certain degree, benevolent ; but that he 
must be so, from the nature of the human organism and its re- 
lation to that greater organism, society, of which it is a con- 
stituent part. Cumberland's treatment of the benevolent feel- 
ings inevitably suggests the evolutionary view, but it is easy to 
see that it is consistent with his own static view of things. On 
the whole, we are left somewhat in doubt as to whether the 
motive of the moral agent is ever wholly altruistic. At the 
same time, as we have already seen, perhaps this is not one 
of the things which we should criticise in the system, as the 
question is a somewhat abstract one, which naturally did not 
trouble Cumberland, whose aim throughout was eminently 
practical. It was enough for him that we are practically altru- 
istic in many of our actions, i.e., free from selfish calculations 
regarding a probable reward. 

II. Turning to the Good, we were obliged to conclude that it 
is described, now in terms of"* preservation ' or ' perfection,' now 
in terms of * happiness.' As regards the first set of passages, 
Professor Sidgwick is probably wrong in holding that Cumber- 
land does not define perfection so as strictly to exclude ' moral 
perfection,' — which, of course, would involve him in a logical 
circle. From this point of view, the Good is that which pre- 
serves and perfects both mind and body. As regards the pas- 
sages which seem to make ' happiness ' the end, we were 
obliged to ask what was meant by ' happiness,' for the term is 
very vaguely used by early ethical writers. It was found to 



II.] RICHARD CUMBERLAND. 49 

be pleasure depending upon (1) the unimpeded (and effective) 
normal activities of mind and body ; (2) a tranquil frame of 
mind, which, in turn, depends upon (a) external circumstances, 
(b) the feeling that we have acted 'consistently,' (c) the con- 
sciousness that we have acted for the common weal ; and (3) 
a knowledge that others around us are happy. It will also be 
remembered that Cumberland distinguishes between what is 
' naturally ' and what is ' morally ' good. ' Natural ' good is 
the ultimate for Ethics. On the other hand, only voluntary 
actions which tend to that which is * naturally ' good, are 
'morally' good. So much for the Good in general. Of 
course, what Cumberland sets up as the (objective) end of all 
truly moral action is the good of all, or of as many as possible. 
III. As regards the Laws of Nature, we saw that the system 
did not really need such a scaffolding, and, indeed, that it was 
rather hampered than helped by it. At the same time, we had 
to recognize that the external form of the system was practi- 
cally determined by this conception ; also that it was here that 
we must look for Cumberland's application of his unifying prin- 
ciple, i.e., his deduction of the particular virtues. Hobbes had 
demanded that a Law should be ' clearly promulgated by a 
competent authority'; and had denied that, in this sense, the 
Laws of Nature were Laws at all. Cumberland, on the other 
hand, is concerned to show that they are technically such. 
They are * clearly promulgated,' for the effects of actions are 
uniform ; and we cannot doubt of the ' competent authority ' 
in this case, for it is none less than the First Cause, the 
Author of Nature. The effects of actions were found to be 
treated only in so far as they belonged to the present life ; but 
a sharp distinction was made between the ' immediate ' [inter- 
nal] and the ' mediate ' [external] effects, for the confessed rea- 
son that 'mediate' effects were somewhat uncertain. The de- 
duction of the particular Laws of Nature was found to be 
hardly adequate, but, on the whole, consistent. 

What shall be said of the system which we have been exam- 
ining ? Cumberland's style is radically bad, his order of expo- 



50 ENGLISH UTILITARIANISM. 

sition almost uniformly unfortunate. Moreover, a good many 
of his very numerous criticisms of Hobbes are somewhat wide 
of the mark. It might seem as if there were little use in at- 
tempting to revive interest in this practically forgotten moral- 
ist. Yet the curious fact is, that Cumberland alone, of the 
English ethical writers of his time, sounds modern, as we read 
him to-day. Hobbes and Cudworth were greater men ; More 
had a more charming personality ; but when we read their 
works, we feel that Egoism, Intellectualism, and theological 
Mysticism, as foundations of ethical theory, belong essentially 
to the past. Cumberland, on the other hand, 'builded better 
than he knew.' He was the first exponent, in England, at 
least, of a tendency which for a long time practically dominated 
English Ethics. And even this is not all. Though writing 
more than a century and a half before the publication of the 
Origin of Species, he viewed society as an organic whole. Per- 
haps no single phrase would express his ideal so completely as 
* the health of the social organism ' ; and yet we regard that 
formula as the peculiar property of the present generation. 
Moreover, if he recognizes < preservation ' and ' perfection ' 
on the one hand, and < happiness ' on the other, as parallel 
principles, we must concede that neither of these princi- 
ples has definitely supplanted the other even yet. Indeed, — 
if one may venture to attribute anything like unanimity to 
the constructive ethical literature of the last few years, — it 
may be said that what is now being sought, more than anything 
else, is some principle at once comprehensive enough to com- 
bine these two seemingly antagonistic notions in a higher syn- 
thesis, and definite enough to serve as the basis of a coherent 
system of Ethics. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE RELATION OF SHAFTESBURY AND 
HUTCHESON TO UTILITARIANISM. 

WHILE we are certainly bound to recognize in Cumber- 
land's De legibus naturae, published in 1672, the first 
statement by an English writer of the Utilitarian principle, 
hardly any one would now claim that the system of the Bishop 
of Peterborough is free from ambiguity, or even internal con- 
tradictions. Indeed, throughout the treatise ' perfection ' (in 
the sense of highest development of the powers of mind and 
body) is regarded as a principle parallel to that of ' the greatest 
happiness of all.' It is only by noting the greater emphasis 
laid upon the Utilitarian principle, the greater actual use made 
of it in rationalizing morality, that we are able confidently to 
place Cumberland, where he belongs, at the head of the distin- 
guished list of English Utilitarian moralists. 

We shall now attempt to trace the further development of 
the < greatest happiness ' principle. The first step might seem 
to be an obvious one ; for Locke, — whose Essay, it will be 
remembered, was first published in 1689-90, — is popularly 
regarded not only as a Utilitarian, but as the founder of English 
Utilitarianism. One can hardly understand the prevalence of 
this mistaken view, particularly as no recognized authority on 
the history of English Ethics seems really to have committed 
himself to such an interpretation of Locke. 1 

The fact is that Locke, while he devoted the first book of 
the Essay to controverting the doctrine of ' innate ideas ' (as he 
understood it), is by no means opposed to Intuitional Ethics in 

1 To be sure, Whewell's treatment of Locke's system, at once careless and 
somewhat partisan, would be almost sure to mislead the ordinary reader. He 
takes no pains to distinguish between the supposed tendency of the system of 
thought as a whole and what Locke actually set forth as his own views on ethical 
subjects. At the same time, he does mention, toward the end of his exposition, 
certain features of the ethical system proper which ought to keep one from regard- 
ing it as standing for the ' greatest happiness ' principle. (See Hist, of Mor. 
Phil, in Eng., Lect. v.) 



52 ENGLISH UTILITARIANISM. [Chap. 

its more moderate form. To be sure, he holds that " good and 
evil . . . are nothing but pleasure or pain, or that which 
occasions or procures pleasure or pain to us." 1 If he had 
actually worked out his ethical theory on this basis, we should, 
of course, find him standing for acknowledged Hedonism, 
either Egoistic or Universalistic, presumably the latter. But 
this he did not do. It is always to be remembered that Locke 
never wrote a formal treatise on Ethics. One has to gather 
his views on the subject from works devoted to other matters, 
mainly from the Essay and the Reasonableness of Christianity. 
If the result is not altogether satisfactory, one must be particu- 
larly careful not to read into the philosopher's views on Ethics 
a consistency not to be found there. On the one hand, he was 
not a little influenced by the then almost universal conception 
of Laws of Nature ; and, on the other, he seems to hold the 
contradictory theses (i) that human reason is not able to 
arrive at proper notions of morality, apart from revelation ; 2 
and (2) that moral, like mathematical, truths are capable of 
rigorous and complete demonstration. 3 Often, indeed, Locke 
is concerned to show that, and how, the practice of virtue is 
conducive to happiness ; but this, in itself, proves nothing. 
Nearly all his contemporaries, of whatever ethical school, did 
the same. It is wholly characteristic, when he speaks of Divine 
Law as "the eternal, immutable standard of right." 4 In fact, 
apart from certain more or less doubtful corollaries from his 
metaphysical system, 5 his ethical speculations were mainly on 
the theological plane. In so far as this was true, he did not, of 
course, definitely commit himself to any particular ethical 
theory. It would thus hardly be too much to say that Locke 
had no ethical system at all, in the strict sense of the word. 
This implies nothing whatever in disparagement of the philoso- 
pher, but simply that he never gave to Ethics a sufficient 

1 Essay, Bk. ii, ch. xxviii, § 5. 

2 See, e.g., Reas. of Chr., Works, vol. vii, p. 141. 
8 See, e.g., Essay, Bk. iii, ch. xi, § 16. 

4 Reas. of Chr., p. 1 33. 

5 Like his position that the truths of Ethics are capable of quasi-mathematical 
demonstration. 



III.] SHAFTESBURY AND HUTCHESON. 53 

amount of consecutive attention to develop a coherent system 
of his own. It is evident that our present object does not 
require that we delay longer for an examination of the ethical 
position of the author of the Essay concerning Human Under- 
standing. 

The case of two other important English writers, whose 
interests were preeminently ethical, presents much more diffi- 
culty. I refer to Shaftesbury and Hutcheson. While it is 
quite unusual, and, as it seems to me, equally unjustifiable, to 
class them as Utilitarians, 1 their systems do stand in a relation 
to Utilitarianism sufficiently close to require careful examina- 
tion. And, unfortunately, it is quite impossible adequately to 
treat this matter without devoting to it more space than the 
present paper, — or, indeed, any brief sketch of the history of 
English Utilitarianism, — would permit. To do so, would 
mean to exhibit in detail all sides of these complex systems, 
and then to show the subordinate importance of their Utilitarian 
aspect. Here one must confine oneself, therefore, to a brief, 
if not somewhat dogmatic presentation of what, in itself 
considered, is worthy of much more elaborate treatment. 

Two questions, in particular, occupied the ethical writers of 
the period which we are considering : (1) What is the [objective] 
' end ' of moral action ? (2) What is the nature of man, and in 
what relation does this stand to the ' end ' ? But it might very 
well happen, — did constantly happen, in fact, — that different 
writers would give a very different emphasis to these two 
questions, fundamentally related as they are. Now Shaftes- 
bury 2 was so concerned with the question regarding the nature 
of man, and with his idea that virtue is ' natural,' and consists 
in a proper * balance ' of the affections, that he practically failed 
to give the first question, that regarding the 'end' of moral 
action, explicit treatment. As a result, while we find in his 
system by far the best refutation of Hobbes which had appeared 

1 The relation of Hutcheson to Utilitarianism is much closer than that of 
Shaftesbury, as we shall presently see. 

2 The first edition of the Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, was 
published in three volumes, in 17 11. The following references are to the second 
edition, published in 17 14. 



54 



ENGLISH UTILITARIANISM. 



[Chap. 



up to his time, it is particularly hard to say exactly how he 
would have denned the Good. 

And first, with regard to the nature of man. Nothing is 
more absurdly fictitious, according to Shaftesbury's view, than 
Hobbes' ' state of nature.' In the first place, we can find no 
true starting-point for Ethics in the individual. Try as we 
may, we still find him forming part of a system. 1 But, keeping 
to the individual for the sake of the argument, " the creature 
must have endured many changes ; and each change, whilst he 
was thus growing up, was as natural, one as another. So that 
either there must be reckoned a hundred different states of 
nature ; or, if one, it can be only that in which nature was 
perfect, and her growth complete." 2 Again, nothing is so 
natural as that which conduces to preservation, whether the 
creature in question be man or animal. Then, " if eating and 
drinking be natural, herding is so too. If any appetite or sense 
be natural, the sense of fellowship is the same." 3 

We are now prepared to see that the popular antithesis 
between egoism and altruism, — upon which any theory of 
absolute egoism, like that of Hobbes, must be based, — is 
largely artificial. We may very well distinguish the ' natural ' 
[social, benevolent] affections from the ' self ' affections [love 
of life, bodily appetites, etc.], and both of these from the 
* unnatural ' affections [malevolence, etc.] ; 4 but only the last 
are really bad. ' Self ' affections are not only permissible, but 
necessary, while the ' natural ' affections may exist in excess, 
and thus defeat themselves. Virtue, then, consists not so 
much in a triumph of the one set of impulses over the other as 
in a proper ' balance ' between the two. As we have seen, 
man finds himself part of a system from the very first. Since 
he is originally a social being, he derives his greatest happiness 
from that which makes for the existence of society and the 
common weal. Hence the good of all tends to become realized 



1 Inquiry concerning Virtue, " Characteristics 

2 The Moralists, vol. ii, p. 316. 

8 Freedom of Wit and Humour, vol. i, p. no. 
4 Inquiry, vol. ii, p. 86 et seq. 



vol. ii, p. 16 et seq. 



III.] SHAFTESBURY AND HUTCHESON. 55 

through the enlightened endeavors of each to attain his own true 
happiness ; for vice, according to Shaftesbury, ultimately springs 
from ignorance. Therefore " the question would not be, Who 
loved himself, or Who not ? but, Who loved or served himself 
the rightest, and after the truest manner ? " 2 

Virtue, then, consists in the harmony of the first two classes 
of affections. But the necessary concomitant of virtue is 
happiness, just as pleasure attends the right state of the 
organism. The good man is his own best friend, the bad man 
his own worst enemy ; for every good act tends to harmonize 
the affections, every bad act to derange them. 2 Whether 
happiness itself be the Good, we shall have to ask almost 
immediately. Here we are only concerned with its relation to 
virtue, as the necessary concomitant of the latter. 

Before leaving Shaftesbury's treatment of the nature of man, 
it will be necessary to consider his doctrine of a 'moral sense.' 
The importance of this doctrine for the system is, of course, 
variously estimated ; 3 but certainly it cannot by any means be 
ignored. As the name would imply, the 'moral sense' is 
original. It is analogous to the faculty by virtue of which, as 
Shaftesbury assumes, we are able in some measure to appre- 
ciate the beautiful from the very first. But it is to be noted 
that both these faculties require cultivation. Thus the ' moral 
sense ' is hardly the infallible thing which Butler thought he 
found in Conscience. It also differs from the latter in that it 
seems to belong almost wholly to the affective side of our 
nature. But though it acts, in a way, independently of reason, 
it is never in contradiction with the latter. On the contrary, 
its deliverances may be vindicated by reference to reason and 
experience. When it is perverted, this is through habitual wrong 
action (which deranges the affections), or through superstition. 

Turning now to the author's account of the [objective] ' end ' 



1 Freedom of Wit and Humour, vol. i, p. 121. 

2 Inquiry, vol. ii, p. 85. 

3 Professor Sidgwick very justly says : "This doctrine, though characteristic 
and important, is not exactly necessary to his main argument ; it is the crown 
rather than the keystone of his ethical structure " (Hist, of Ethics, p. 187). 



56 ENGLISH UTILITARIANISM. [Chap. 

of moral action, we are prepared for some ambiguity. Of 
course the good of all must be the end, or must be implied by 
the end, 1 since the author begins with the conception of man 
as a social being. But what is the Good ? Shaftesbury's 
frequent use of the word ' happiness ' is not in itself decisive. 
Happiness, as we have just seen, is the necessary concomitant 
of the right state of the being in question. This latter seems 
at first to be regarded as the thing most important ; 2 at the 
same time, it is impossible to deny that the author's interpre- 
tation of the Good often seems clearly enough to be hedonistic. 3 
In Cumberland we found * happiness ' and ' perfection ' as 
distinct, but parallel principles. In Shaftesbury we do not, as 
it seems to me, find them thus in mechanical juxtaposition, but 
wrought together, so that they appear as different aspects of 
the same fact of moral health or harmony. If this be so, we 
have here a system more difficult than that of Cumberland to 
place under one of the conventional modern rubrics. The 
good of society is the test, indeed, but what this good is, 
Shaftesbury nowhere quite clearly states. To me the system 
seems to bear at least a closer relation to the modern doctrine 
of ' self-realization ' than to Utilitarianism, and this, in spite of 
the author's habitual emphasis of the affective side of our 
nature, at the expense of the cognitive and volitional sides. 4 
It will be remembered that he constantly insists upon the 
importance of an harmonious development of the truly human 
nature, even where he is concerned to show that the practice 
of virtue is conducive to the agent's own happiness, and seldom, 
if ever, suggests definite hedonistic calculations as determining 
the morality of a given action or class of actions. In what has 
just been said, the complication arising from Shaftesbury's 
doctrine of a * moral sense ' has been purposely neglected. 
For many this would at once determine the non-Utilitarian 

1 See, e.g., Inquiry, vol. ii, p. 77. 

2 See, e.g., ibid., p. 14, et seq. Cf. Sidgwick, Hist, of Ethics, p. 184, note. 
8 See, e.g., Inquiry, vol. ii, p. 99 et seq. 

4 This one-sidedness of Shaftesbury's system doubtless arose in part from the 
fact that he was contending explicitly against Hobbes and implicitly against the 
Intellectualists. 



III.] SHAFTESBURY AND HUTCHESON. 57 

character of the system ; but I should not regard the point as 
decisive, apart from other considerations. Moreover, it must 
be remembered that, if the system be regarded as really 
Utilitarian, its relation is to the later, not to the earlier 
Utilitarianism (excluding Cumberland), for Gay, Tucker, Paley, 
and Bentham regard the motive of the individual in moral 
action as ultimately egoistic. 

It is customary to regard Hutcheson's system * as the logical 
development of Shaftesbury's; but, while true in a sense, this 
view requires important modification. Though we have already 
found in Shaftesbury's system practically all the elements that 
enter into Hutcheson's, the different emphasis which is given 
to two of these in the latter system should be carefully noted. 
Shaftesbury, in his explicit opposition to Hobbes and his 
implicit opposition to the Intellectualists, had tended to iden- 
tify virtue with benevolence. At the same time, his funda- 
mental thought seems to have been that virtue consists in the 
harmony of the ' natural ' and ' self ' affections. With Hutche- 
son, on the other hand, benevolence becomes much more 
prominent, and is practically regarded as the beginning and the 
end of virtue. Again, Shaftesbury had assumed the existence 
of a ' moral sense,' but his system is quite intelligible without 
it. On the other hand, it would hardly be too much to say 
that Hutcheson's main object was to prove the existence of a 
* moral sense,' distinct from self-interest. 

Let us consider the ' moral sense ' first. This is defined as 
" that determination to be pleased with the contemplation of 
those affections, actions, or characters of rational agents, which 
we call virtuous." It is universal in distribution, immediate in 
action, and original in character. We are obliged to assume 
such a faculty, mainly because it is impossible to reduce our 
moral judgments to considerations of self-interest. This 
doctrine of a < moral sense ' is not to be confused with that of 



1 The Inquiry concerning Beauty, Order, Harmony, Design and the Inquiry 
concerning Moral Good and Evil appeared in 1725 ; the Essay on the Nature and 
Conduct of the Passions and Affections, and Illustrations upon the Moral Sense, in 
1728. The System of Moral Philosophy was published posthumously in 1755. 



58 ENGLISH UTILITARIANISM. [Chap. 

' innate ideas,' to which it bears "no relation." 1 The 'moral 
sense' requires education and development, like our other facul- 
ties. In respect of importance, it appears to be designed for 
regulating and controlling all our powers. 2 It is to be observed 
that this faculty approves always, and only, of benevolence in 
the moral agent; 3 also that "it gives us more pleasure and 
pain than all our other faculties." 4 

As we have just seen, benevolence, in this system, is the 
very essence of virtue ; and (as with Shaftesbury) it is in the 
truest sense 'natural,' not a subtle refinement of egoism. 
Indeed, Hutcheson's extreme insistence on benevolence results 
in a one-sidedness which cannot be overlooked. Yet the author 
admits that the want of some degree of self-love would be 
" universally pernicious," 5 and even holds that one may treat 
oneself as one would a third person "who was a competitor 
of equal merit." 6 He attempts to avoid the difficulty, — a real 
one for a system identifying virtue with benevolence, — by 
showing that we may moralize our naive tendency to pursue 
our own happiness by remembering always that a due regard 
for it is necessary for the good of all. Again, he does not 
claim, of course, that the benevolence in which virtue practi- 
cally consists is felt equally for all men; but rather likens it to 
gravitation, which "increases as the distance is diminished." 7 

The relation between benevolence and the ' moral sense ' in 
the system is now tolerably plain. The fact that we approve 
benevolence, and nothing but benevolence, as virtuous, proves 
the existence of the 'moral sense.' If we had no such faculty, 
we should approve only what was advantageous to ourselves. 
On the other hand, it is our ' moral sense ' that proves the 
essence of virtue to consist in benevolence. We must avoid 
confusion on one point, however : benevolence, as an impulse 
to virtue, is quite distinct from the 'moral sense,' as a disposi- 



1 Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue, second edn., p. 
xvi. Of course this is only Hutcheson's view of the matter. 

2 System of Moral Philosophy, vol. i, p. 6i. 

8 Inquiry, p. 196 et seq. 4 Ibid., p. 242. 

5 Idid r p. 172. 6 Ibid., p. 174. 7 Ibid., p. 220. 



III.] SHAFTESBURY AND HUTCHESON. 59 

tion to receive pleasure from the contemplation of virtue. We 
do not act benevolently for the pleasure which we may thus 
obtain. That would be a contradiction in terms. 1 

So much, then, for benevolence and the moral sense, as the 
two most important aspects of man's moral nature. Taken 
alone, however, they are not sufficient. Our natural benevo- 
lence is a merely general tendency impelling us to conduct for 
the good of our fellows, particularly those standing to us in the 
closest relations of life. As such, it needs guidance. And 
again, the l moral sense/ — so far, at least, as we have yet 
seen, — simply approves of actions performed from benevolent 
motives. Thus it approves of what is ' formally ' good, 2 the 
good intention. But when we are electing what course of 
action we shall pursue, we are to aim at that which is ' mate- 
rially ' good. Here it is still, perhaps, the * moral sense ' that 
gives us the clue, but for practical guidance we must depend 
largely upon our cognitive powers, as employed with reference 
to an external criterion. 

It will be best to let the author give his own account of this 
very important matter. " In comparing the moral qualities of 
actions, in order to regulate our election among various actions 
proposed, or to find which of them has the greatest moral 
excellency, we are led by our moral sense of virtue to judge 
thus : that in equal degrees of happiness, expected to proceed 
from the action, the virtue is in proportion to the number of 
persons to whom the happiness shall extend; (and here the 
dignity or moral importance of persons may compensate num- 
bers) and, in equal numbers, the virtue is as the quantity of 
the happiness or natural good; or that the virtue is in a com- 
pound ratio of the quantity of good and number of enjoy ers. 
In the same manner, the moral evil, or vice, is as the degree 
of misery, and number of sufferers; so that, that action is best 
which procures the greatest happiness for the greatest num- 
bers, and that worst which, in like manner, occasions misery." 3 

1 Inquiry, p. 116. 

2 The distinction is made by Hutcheson himself. See System, vol. i, p. 252. 
8 Inquiry, p. 177. 



60 ENGLISH UTILITARIANISM. [Chap. 

This looks at first like Utilitarianism pure and simple ; but 
Hutcheson is mainly interested in that which is formally good, 
the benevolent intention, and he develops a calculus, the object 
of which is to show the degree of morality of a given action in 
terms of the net benevolence of the agent, i.e., excess of 
benevolence over self-interest. He begins with five * axioms.' 
For example: Let M= moment of good; B = benevolence ; 
and A = ability. Then M= B X A. 1 These apparently 
simple < axioms ' lend themselves to decidedly elaborate com- 
putations, the ultimate object of which, in each case, is to 
ascertain the value of B. It must always be remembered, 
however, that M (the amount of happiness produced by the 
action) is assumed in these computations as a known quantity. 
Now M must be learned from experience, and the ' hedonistic 
calculus ' of the Utilitarian must be employed to find it. Thus 
the calculus referred to supplements, but does not supplant, 
the ' hedonistic calculus/ In spite of the * moral sense,' the 
actual content of the moral laws would have to be largely 
determined by Utilitarian methods. 2 

It may still seem as if the system were Utilitarianism in 
disguise, — and Hutcheson does actually stand in a much 
closer relation to the ' greatest happiness ' theory than does 
Shaftesbury, — but the matter is not quite so simple as would 
at first appear. That which makes for happiness is the 
* materially' Good, to be sure; but we have seen that "the 
dignity or moral importance of persons may compensate 
numbers." Moreover, as might be expected, when the happi- 
ness of only one person is under consideration, the qualitative 
distinction between pleasures is regarded as absolute. The author 
says : " We have an immediate sense of a dignity, a perfection, 
or beatific quality in some kinds, which no intenseness of the 
lower kinds can equal, were they also as lasting as we could 
wish." 3 And this feeling of human dignity, we are told, is some- 
thing which we have quite independently of the ' moral sense.' 4 

1 Inquiry, pp. 1 83-188. 

2 Such is actually Hutcheson's procedure in many of his deductions. 
8 System, vol. i, p. 117. 4 Ibid., p. 27. 



III.] SHAFTESBURY AND HUTCHESON. 6l 

Again, Hutcheson, like Shaftesbury, insisted upon the disin- 
terested motive of the truly moral agent. This, as we saw in 
the case of the latter author, would remove the system from 
Utilitarianism in its original (complete) form, as represented 
by Gay, Tucker, Paley, and Bentham. It is further to be noted 
that, while Hutcheson comes a good deal nearer than Shaftes- 
bury to stating the Utilitarian principle (and was actually the 
first English writer, so far as I am aware, to hit upon the exact 
Utilitarian formula), he also emphasized the doctrine of a 
' moral sense ' much more strongly than Shaftesbury had done. 
This results in a very considerable complication. The < moral 
sense ' is by hypothesis ultimate. Now, not only is it, accord- 
ing to Hutcheson, the touchstone of virtue; but from it, either 
directly or indirectly, are derived the major part of our 
pleasures and pains. Obviously this has an important bearing 
upon the ' hedonistic calculus,' which we found to be logically 
implied by the system. In computing the * material ' goodness 
of an action, we must take into account, not merely the 
natural effects of the action, but these complicated with the 
much more important effects of the ' moral sense ' itself. The 
result is that the 'hedonistic calculus,' as ordinarily under- 
stood, is pushed into the background. Indeed, as we have 
had occasion to notice, when Hutcheson actually develops a 
'calculus,' it is to ascertain the amount of benevolence implied 
by a given action, not the amount of happiness which may be 
expected to result from it, this latter, curiously enough, being 
assumed as a known quantity. 

From what has been said, it will be seen that the system 
which we have been examining is not properly Utilitarian. Of 
course, if the author had been as predominantly interested in 
the ' materially ' good as he actually was in the ' formally ' 
good, and had avoided certain minor inconsistencies, his sys- 
tem would have closely resembled that of J. S. Mill; but, on 
the one hand, we are not at liberty to neglect the emphasis 
which he actually gave to the different sides of his system, 
and, on the other, it would hardly be held now that J. S. 
Mill was a consistent exponent of Utilitarianism. In short, 



62 ENGLISH UTILITARIANISM. 

Hutcheson is the * moral sense ' philosopher par excellence. 
To lose sight of this, is to misinterpret his system. The 
general drift of his argument is plain. If we approve or dis- 
approve of actions, we must do so from motives of self-interest 
or from motives independent of self-interest. The author's 
first step is to prove the disinterestedness of our moral judg- 
ments. This, he thinks, shows conclusively the existence of a 
' moral sense,' and so vindicates his characteristic position. 

It hardly need be said that the two very suggestive systems 
which we have been principally occupied with examining 
necessarily appear at a disadvantage in being compared with a 
type of ethical theory to which they do not properly belong. 
Most certainly they are not to be criticised merely for teaching 
more than can be comprehended within the bounds of the 
Utilitarian formula. Subsequent ethical theory for a long 
time represented an increasing degree of differentiation, which 
could only end in one-sidedness all round. In our own genera- 
tion, there is a marked tendency to return to that more com- 
prehensive view of man which Shaftesbury and Hutcheson did 
so much to work out, and to attempt a synthesis which shall 
do justice to our human nature as a whole. 



CHAPTER IV. 
GAY'S ETHICAL SYSTEM. 

IT might seem highly improbable that an anonymous disser- 
tation of only about thirty pages, prefixed to a translation, 
actually by another hand, of a third writer's Latin work, should 
be one of the most interesting and important contributions to 
the early development of the * greatest happiness ' principle. 
Yet such undoubtedly is the " Preliminary Dissertation," now 
known to have been written by a Rev. Mr. Gay, prefixed to 
Law's translation of King's Origin of Evil. The first edition 
(of the translation and the Dissertation) was published in 173 1 ; 
the second, " revised and enlarged," — an exact reprint, 1 so far 
as the Dissertation is concerned, — in 1732. 

A few dates should be kept in mind here. The first edition 
of Shaftesbury's Inquiry concerning Virtue and Merit was pub- 
lished in 171 1 ; that of Hutcheson's Inquiry into the Original 
of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue in 1725. Hume's ethical 
system first appeared in 1 740, as the third book of the Treatise 
of Human Nature, the other two books having been published 
the year before. Gay's Dissertation, therefore, appeared six 
years after Hutcheson's first ethical work, and nine years before 
the corresponding work of Hume. It is interesting to note 
that Gay's true successors, Tucker and Paley, — for Hume does 
not seem to have been influenced by him, — belong to a later 
generation. The Light of Nature Pursued was first published 
in 1768-74, and the Moral and Political Philosophy in 1785. 

We shall now turn to the " Preliminary Dissertation " itself, 
and give it the very careful examination which its importance 
justifies. The author's own order of exposition, which is not 
uniformly fortunate, will be followed substantially, except where 
notice is given to the contrary. This is possible on account of 
the brevity of the Dissertation, and desirable, on the whole, as 

1 Except that the concluding sentence of the first edition, which is really super- 
fluous, is left out in the second. 



64 ENGLISH UTILITARIANISM. [Chap. 

it will facilitate a comparison of the substance of this remark- 
able essay, — which is not, for most, readily accessible, — with 
the other ethical works named above. 

Gay begins by remarking that, though all writers on morality 
have practically agreed as to what particular classes of actions 
are virtuous or the reverse, they have at least seemed to differ 
in their answers to the related questions : (i) What is the 
* criterion ' of virtue ? and (2) What is the motive by which 
men are induced to pursue it ? Both of these questions must 
be considered, of course, in any treatment of Ethics, and the 
author's own view is that the same principle, or the same set 
of principles, will be found to solve both. 

It is therefore indifferent which side of the moral problem 
we attack first. But, before attempting anything constructive, 
Gay stops to notice a current view. Some hold that a rational 
creature will choose only that which, on the whole, is calculated 
to bring him most happiness ; further, that virtue does bring 
the agent most happiness ; and that therefore it will be chosen 
just in proportion as one is rational. 1 Moreover, they hold that 
whatever is an 'object of choice' is 'approved of.' Gay seems 
to object to this view mainly because it implies too great a 
degree of self-consciousness on the part of the agent. He 
admits that Hutcheson 2 has made abundantly plain : (1) that 
most men do actually approve virtue without knowing why; 
and (2) that some pursue it even in opposition to their own 
apparent advantage. But Hutcheson was not content with 
emphasizing the facts ; he had recourse to a ' moral sense ' to 
explain moral approval, and a ' public or benevolent affection ' 
to explain apparently disinterested conduct. This, however, is 
cutting the knot instead of untying it. We may very well be 
practically benevolent and capable of forming what seem like 
ultimate moral judgments, and yet these phenomena of our 
moral life may be perfectly explainable without assuming 
unknown ' faculties ' or ' principles.' 

1 Here Gay carelessly speaks of virtue as being " always an object of choice." 

2 Referred to as " the ingenious author of the Inquiry into the Original of our 
Idea of Virtue." 



IV.] GAY'S ETHICAL SYSTEM. 65 

So much for the point of departure. We are now ready to 
follow the author's own attempt at a solution of the problems 
of Ethics. At the very beginning, unfortunately, he entangles 
himself and his readers in a fruitless discussion regarding the 
meaning of the term * criterion,' which we may safely omit. 1 In 
this discussion, however, he has occasion to define virtue, and 
the definition, — which he wrongly supposes would be accepted 
by all, despite differences in ethical theory, — is quite important 
for his own treatment of Ethics. He says: "Virtue is the 
conformity to a rule of life, directing the actions of all rational 
creatures with respect to each other's happiness; to which con- 
formity every one in all cases is obliged : and every one that does 
so conform is, or ought to be, approved of, esteemed, and loved 
for so doing." 2 In justification of this definition, Gay observes 
that virtue always implies some relation to others. "Where 
self is only concerned, a man is called < prudent ' (not virtuous), 
and an action which relates immediately to God is styled 
* religious.' " Again, as we have already seen, whatever men 
may believe virtue to consist in, they always assume that it 
implies ' obligation,' and that it deserves ' approbation.' 

Before treating directly of the ' criterion ' of virtue, the 
author chooses to consider ' obligation.' This section 3 of the 
Dissertation is so important, — particularly with a view to sub- 
sequent ethical theory, as represented by Tucker, Paley, and 
Bentham, — that the first two paragraphs will be quoted 
in full. 

" Obligation is the necessity of doing or omitting any action 
in order to be happy : i.e., when there is such a relation between 
an agent and an action that the agent cannot be happy without 
doing or omitting that action, then the agent is said to be 
obliged to do or omit that action. So that obligation is evi- 
dently founded upon the prospect of happiness, and arises 
from that necessary influence which any action has upon pres- 
ent or future happiness or misery. And no greater obligation 

1 Gay's own use of ' criterion ' is not quite exact, as will be seen later; but the 
omitted discussion throws practically no light on his use of the word. 

2 See p. xxxvi (2d ed.). 3 I.e., § ii. 



66 ENGLISH UTILITARIANISM. [Chap. 

can be supposed to be laid upon any free agent without an 
express contradiction. 1 

" This obligation may be considered four ways, according to 
the four different manners in which it is induced : First, that 
obligation which ariseth from perceiving the natural conse- 
quences of things, i.e., the consequences of things acting accord- 
ing to the fixed laws of nature, may be called natural. Secondly, 
that arising from merit or demerit, as producing the esteem 
and favor of our fellow-creatures, or the contrary, is usually 
styled virtuous? Thirdly, that arising from the authority of 
the civil magistrate, civil. Fourthly, that from the authority 
of God, religious!' 3 

Gay proceeds to show that complete obligation can come 
only from the authority of God, " because God only can in all 
cases make a man happy or miserable." A few paragraphs 
further on the author is as explicit as one could wish on this 
point, — a very important one, as hardly need be remarked, for 
the early Utilitarians, who, with the exception of Cumberland and 
(probably) Hume, 4 agree in regarding the motive of the moral 
agent as ultimately egoistic. He says : " Thus those who 
either expressly exclude, or don't mention the will of God, mak- 
ing the immediate criterion of virtue to be the good of man- 
kind, must either allow that virtue is not in all cases obligatory 
(contrary to the idea which all or most men have of it) or they 
must say that the good of mankind is a sufficient obligation. 
But how can the good of mankind be any obligation to me, 
when perhaps in particular cases, such as laying down my life, 
or the like, it is contrary to my happiness ? " 5 

We are now prepared to return to the question regarding the 
' criterion ' of virtue. Since complete obligation can come 

1 Cf Paley's Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy, bk. ii, ch. ii. 

2 The confusion here is only in the form of expression. 

8 Cf Bentham's Principles of Morals and Legislation, ch. iii, particularly 
§§ ii-vi. 

4 Hume would be regarded as an exception only by those who accept the 
Inquiry concerning the Principles of Morals as a satisfactory statement of his 
ethical position. 

6 See p. xli. (In the second edition one must look out for errors in paging. 
The correct paging is given here.) 



IV.] GAY'S ETHICAL SYSTEM. 67 

only from God, the will of God is the immediate rule or cri- 
terion, 1 though- not the " whole will of God," since virtue was 
denned as " the conformity to a rule directing my behavior 
with respect to my fellow-creatures." But, as regards my fel- 
lows, what does God will that I do ? From the infinite good- 
ness of God, it follows that he must desire the happiness of 
men. Hence he must will such conduct on my part as is cal- 
culated to conduce to their happiness. Thus, the will of God 
is the * immediate criterion ' of virtue, but the happiness of 
mankind is the 'criterion' of the will of God. Hence we must 
consider the consequences of actions, and from these deduce 
all particular virtues and vices. 

We have now in outline all the essential principles of Gay's 
ethical system proper. The remainder of the Dissertation 
consists in an attempt to furnish an adequate psychological 
foundation for the principles above set forth. It will be 
noticed that this second part 2 was as important for the devel- 
opment of the Associationist Psychology as both parts were for 
the development of early Utilitarian theory. 

The author begins by remarking that man is a being capable, 
not only of passively experiencing pleasure and pain, but of 
foreseeing the causes of these and governing himself accord- 
ingly. The ' end ' of action, — that pursued for its own sake, — 
is pleasure. That which man finds calculated to produce 
pleasure, he calls the 'Good,' and approves of it; while his 
attitude is precisely the contrary in the case of that which is 
known to have painful consequences. Now Good or Evil, when 
thought of, give rise to a proportionate present pleasure or 
pain. This is called 'passion,' and the attending desire 'affec- 
tion.' Hence, by reflecting upon Good and Evil, desires and 
aversions are excited which are (roughly) distinguished as Love 
and Hatred. From these, variously modified, ariae all the other 
'passions' and 'affections.' It is a mistake to suppose that 
these latter are implanted in our nature originally, like our 
capacity for experiencing pleasure or pain. 

1 Observe the ambiguity in the use of ' criterion,' referred to in note above. 

2 This, division of the Dissertation into two parts is not explicitly made by Gay 
At the same time his order of exposition inevitably suggests it. 



68 ENGLISH UTILITARIANISM. [Chap. 

When directed toward inanimate objects, the passions and 
affections 1 are Hope, Fear, Despair, and its unnamed opposite. 
As a matter of fact, however, our pleasures and pains depend 
quite as much upon other conscious agents as upon inanimate 
objects. Hence, as Gay says : "As I perceive that my happiness 
is dependent on others, I cannot but judge whatever I apprehend 
to be proper to excite them to endeavor to promote my happi- 
ness, to be a means of happiness, i.e., I cannot but approve it." 
Moreover, since others can be induced to act for my happiness 
only by the prospect of their own future happiness, I cannot 
but approve of " the annexing pleasure to such actions of theirs 
as are undertaken upon my account." And, since we desire 
what we approve of, 2 we desire the happiness of those who 
have done us good. That in the agent (a voluntary action or 
series of such actions) which constitutes the ground for the 
approbation and love just accounted for, is called the ' merit* 
of the agent ; the contrary, < demerit.' 

But here a difficulty arises. How can there be ' merit ' in 
the action of another, when that action is performed (ultimately) 
for the agent's own happiness? The main reason why this 
seems paradoxical, or worse, to common-sense is that common- 
sense does not distinguish between an * inferior ' and an ' ulti- 
mate ' end. In by far the greater part of human actions, it is 
an * inferior ' end that the agent has in mind. Thus, though 
the happiness of the agent is always the ' ultimate ' end, all that 
the beau immediately desires is to please by his dress, and all 
that the student immediately desires is knowledge. For any 
such ' particular ' end, we may, of course, inquire the reason ; 
but to expect a reason for the * ultimate ' end is absurd. " To 
ask why I pursue happiness, will admit of no other answer 
than an explanation of the terms." 

But, to proceed, when the ' particular ' end of any action is 
the happiness of another, that action is * meritorious.' On the 
other hand, " when an agent has a view in any particular action 
distinct from my happiness, and that view is his only motive to 

1 Gay makes no serious attempt to keep the two separate. 

2 The apparent logical inversion here is Gay's. 



IV.] GAY'S ETHICAL SYSTEM. 69 

that action, tho' that action promote my happiness to never so 
great a degree, yet that agent acquires no merit, i.e., he is not 
thereby entitled to any favor and esteem." It makes a great 
difference, to be sure, whether another aims at my favor in gen- 
eral, or only for some particular end which he has in view. " I 
am under less obligation (caeteris paribus) the more particular 
his expectations from me are ; but under obligation I am." 1 

Gay concludes by noticing a possible "grand objection " to 
his theory. It is this. The reason or end of action must always 
be known to the agent ; otherwise, it would not actually be his 
motive. The inquiry, e.g., is not why one should be grateful, 
but why one is so. As Hutcheson has shown, the majority of 
mankind approve of virtue immediately, and apparently without 
regard to their own interest. Must we not, then, after all, as- 
sume that author's ' moral sense ' and ' public affections ' ? 

The reply given to this supposed question is substantially as 
follows. The matter of fact here appealed to has already been 
admitted, and it is perfectly consistent with our theory. " As, 
in the pursuit of truth, we don't always trace every proposition 
whose truth we are examining to a first principle or axiom, but 
acquiesce as soon as we perceive it deducible from some known 
or presumed truth, so in our conduct we do not always travel 
to the ultimate end of our actions, happiness ; but rest con- 
tented as soon as we perceive any action subservient to a 
known or presumed means of happiness. . . . And these 
RESTING PLACES 2 are so often used as principles, that, at 
last, letting that slip out of our minds which first inclined us 
to embrace them, we are apt to imagine them not, as they 
really are, the substitutes of principles, but principles them- 
selves." Hence people have imagined ' innate ideas,' ' instincts,' 
and the like ; and the author adds : " I cannot but wonder why 
the pecuniary sense, a sense of power and party, etc., were not 
mentioned, as well as the moral, — that of honor, order, and 
some others." 3 

1 See p. xlviii. 

2 The large capitals are Gay's, and they occur here only. 
8 See p. liii. 



JO ENGLISH UTILITARIANISM. [Chap. 

More exactly, the true explanation is this. "We first 
perceive or imagine some real good, i.e., fitness to promote our 
happiness, in those things which we love and approve of." 
Hence we annex pleasure to the idea of the same, with the 
result that the idea and the attendant pleasure become indis- 
solubly associated. Gay's first example is the one which has 
since become so well known in this connection, i.e., the love of 
money. It is matter of experience that money, first desired 
merely for what it will procure, sometimes itself becomes the 
exclusive object of pursuit. In the same way knowledge, fame, 
etc., come to be regarded as ends in themselves. Now this 
principle is quite sufficient, he holds, to explain our disinterested 
practice of virtue, as well as certain perverted tendencies of 
human nature. 

As regards these latter, Gay treats in particular of envy, 
emphasizing the fact that we never envy those who are very 
much above or below us, but rather those who may fairly be 
regarded as in some sense competitors. The teleology is plain, 
he thinks ; the success of those with whom we either directly or 
indirectly compete means less chance for ourselves. " This," 
as he quaintly adds, " may possibly cast some light upon the 
black designs and envious purposes of the fallen angels. For 
why might not they have formerly had some competition with 
their fellows ? And why may not such associations be as 
strong in them as [in] us ? " 

At the very close of the Dissertation the author barely refers, 
— though what he says is perfectly clear and to the point, — 
to another consideration which does much to make his general 
(hedonistic) position plausible. It is not necessary, he says, 
that we should form associations like those above described for 
ourselves. We may very well take them from others, i.e., 
"annex pleasure or pain to certain things or actions be- 
cause we see others do it, and acquire principles of action by 
imitating those whom we admire, or whose esteem we would 
procure. Hence the son too often inherits both the vices 
and the party of his father, as well as his estate." In this 
way we can account for national virtues and vices, disposi- 



IV.] GAY'S ETHICAL SYSTEM. J I 

tions and opinions, as well as for what is generally called 
'prejudice of education.' 

We should now recognize, I suppose, that even from the 
empirical point of view the phenomena to which Gay refers 
would have to be explained, not merely by ' association,' but 
partly by heredity and partly by what we can hardly avoid call- 
ing the 'instinct of imitation.' Such considerations at once 
add plausibility to the hedonistic aspect of Gay's system, and 
suggest the important limitations of the principle of ' associa- 
tion,' which he inclines to regard as all-sufficient. Perhaps it 
was from a certain parental tenderness for the infant principle 
of « association ' that Gay neglected to press an argument which 
might have threatened to prove a two-edged sword. 

The Dissertation was so distinctly a new departure that it is 
difficult to avoid remarking at once upon Gay's relation to sub- 
sequent ethical theory. How completely his position was 
adopted by Tucker and Paley, will be evident to anyone 
acquainted with those writers who has carefully followed the 
above. Here, however, we must rather attempt to show the 
relation of the author of the Dissertation to those of his prede- 
cessors who had been either directly or indirectly concerned 
with the development of the Utilitarian principle. 

Cumberland had seemed to make both ' the greatest happiness 
of all' and 'the perfection of body and mind' the moral end, and 
this without suspecting any difficulty in so doing; while Locke, 
though deeply interested in Ethics on the theological and prac- 
tical side, and, in the general sense of the word, a hedonist, 
could hardly be said to have a coherent ethical system of his 
own. Shaftesbury and Hutcheson, on the other hand, had 
done much for the development of English ethical theory, but 
their relation to hedonism was only indirect. In Gay's Disser- 
tation we have, in its complete and unmistakable form, what we 
later shall have to recognize as the first characteristic phase of 
English Utilitarianism. 1 

1 It is important to remember that, while Hume, who published his ethical 
system in its first form only nine years after the Dissertation, was incomparably 



72 ENGLISH UTILITARIANISM. [Chap. 

Evidently the more particular comparison must be between 
Gay and Cumberland, for these authors alone, up to this time, 
had really stated the < greatest happiness ' principle. Cumber- 
land, as we have just seen, defined the Good, now in terms of 
'happiness,' now in terms of 'perfection,' though the emphasis, 
on the whole, seems clearly enough to be on the hedonistic aspect 
of the system. Gay, on the other hand, consistently defined 
the Good as Happiness, and Happiness as " the sum of pleas- 
ures." Moreover, though he does not discuss the question of 
possible ' qualitative distinctions ' between pleasures, it is evi- 
dent that for him such distinctions would have no meaning. 
This, again, is an advance upon Cumberland, for though the 
latter author by no means commits himself to the doctrine of 
' qualitative distinctions,' and seems on the whole to hold the 
opposite view, there is a certain ambiguity in his treatment 
which was almost inevitable, considering that he practically 
carries through Happiness and Perfection as coordinate prin- 
ciples. 

As regards the motive of the moral agent, there is in Gay no 
trace whatever of the confusion which is so striking in Cumber- 
land. To be sure, Cumberland had felt, what Shaftesbury later 
made evident, that man is essentially a social being and that 
the true Good must be a common good. His actual treatment, 
however, is quite confusing ; generally, the agent's motive in 
moral action seems to be regarded as altruistic, but some- 
times the language used seems to imply at least a very consid- 
erable admixture of egoism. In Gay, on the contrary, we find 
even a fictitious simplicity. All the phenomena of moral action, 

superior to Gay, both as a thinker and as a writer, he did not happen to state the 
Utilitarian doctrine in the form which was destined first to be developed. Indeed, 
it may be doubted if this was a matter of chance. Hume's system, much more 
complex than Gay's, and, one may add, on a distinctly higher plane, was not calcu- 
lated to appeal to writers like Tucker, Paley, and Bentham, whose single aim 
appears to have been simplicity of theory. All the writers just named form a per- 
fectly definite school (Bentham and even the historians of Ethics to the contrary, 
notwithstanding), while the phase of Utilitarianism which Hume represents was 
not further developed until comparatively recent times. Historically, then, Hume 
stands outside of the direct line of development, though he doubtless represents 
the Utilitarian position, as we now understand it, much more adequately than any 
one else who wrote in his own, or even the succeeding, generation. 



IV.] GA Y'S ETHICAL SYSTEM. 

as we have seen, are explained by the * association of ideas ' and 
what has more recently been termed the 'law of obliviscence.' 
We begin as egoists, and, indeed, throughout our lives we uni- 
formly seek our own pleasures, avoid our own pains. But it 
amounts to much the same thing as if we were originally altru- 
istic to a certain degree. For, although our own happiness be 
always our * ultimate ' end, it is by no means always our ' proxi- 
mate ' end. The system theoretically allows for cases of 
extreme self-sacrifice. Whether it really affords a satisfactory 
explanation of these, is a question which we hardly need enter 
upon here. The present generation is not likely to make, or 
allow, extraordinary claims for the unaided principle of « asso- 
ciation.' 

So much for the treatment of the ' criterion ' of moral action 
and of the motive of the moral agent by the two authors whom 
we are comparing. Closely related to the latter question is 
that of the ultimate meaning of 'obligation.' It will be remem- 
bered that Cumberland's treatment of obligation was not alto- 
gether consistent with his system as a whole. Instead of basing 
upon the essentially social nature of man and claiming here, as 
generally elsewhere, a certain amount of altruism for the moral 
agent, he merely tries to show that it is greatly for the selfish 
advantage of any given individual to lead the moral life, even 
when extreme sacrifices are demanded. This was doubtless 
done in order to meet Hobbes on his own ground, but the same 
reason led Cumberland to confine his arguments to consequences 
that might be expected in this present life. For obvious 
reasons, he does not make out a perfectly clear case. 

Gay was not hampered with any such controversial considera- 
tions. His treatment is only too clear and consistent through- 
out. " Obligation is the necessity of doing or omitting any 
action in order to be happy. . . . And no greater obligation can 
be supposed to be laid upon any free agent without an express 
contradiction." This was as consistent for Gay as it was other- 
wise for Cumberland; and he immediately goes on to enumerate 
"the four different manners in which [obligation] is induced." 
These are precisely what appear later as Bentham's four "sane- 



74 ENGLISH UTILITARIANISM. [Chap. 

tions." But how can complete obligation (which common-sense 
demands) be vindicated, if we define obligation as has just been 
done ? Gay sees very clearly that we must here depend upon 
the power and wisdom of the Divine Being, "because God only 
can in all cases make a man happy or miserable." And there 
is no restriction to rewards and punishments as given in this 
present life. This position was, of course, adopted by Tucker 
and Paley, the only difference being that Paley particularly 
insists upon rewards and punishments after death. This 
whole question as to the meaning of ' complete obligation ' 
for Utilitarianism in its earlier form, would have to be dis- 
cussed at some length, if we were to compare Paley and 
Bentham with Gay and with each other. Here it is enough 
to notice that, if we assume the necessarily egoistic nature 
of the motive of the moral agent, and at the same time 
attempt to preserve the absolute character of obligation, Gay's 
position is the only logical one. 

In Cumberland we found some confusion in the use of the 
expression 'Right Reason.' The author had evidently been 
somewhat influenced by the intuitionists and intellectualists, 
though he opposed most of their characteristic doctrines, and 
this without really having worked out his own position in detail. 
Nothing corresponding to this confusion is to be found in Gay. 
He does, indeed, in one passage seem to distinguish between 
Experience and Reason, but this is misleading, for he imme- 
diately adds, " You either perceive the inconveniences of some 
things and actions, when they happen, or you foresee them by 
contemplating the nature of the things and actions." Reason 
here is evidently nothing but the faculty of predicting upon 
the basis of past experience. 

Again, in Cumberland we are constantly confronted with the 
then almost universally current conception of Laws of Nature. 
It is easy to show that the system does not really depend upon 
this scaffolding, but that, on the contrary, it is rather cumbered 
than helped by it. At the same time, this conception of Natu- 
ral Laws not only gives its name to Cumberland's treatise, but 
almost wholly determines its external form. The reader hardly 



IV.] GAY'S ETHICAL SYSTEM. 75 

needs to be reminded that Gay's remarkable essay is entirely 
free from such superfluities. One point, however, should be 
noticed in this connection. Gay refers, of course, to the Will 
of God as the * immediate criterion ' of morality ; but the 
Divine Will itself is determined to that which will bring the 
greatest happiness to mankind, or, as the author himself 
expresses it, "The happiness of mankind is the criterion of 
the Will of God." The Utilitarian principle, then, is clearly 
regarded as ultimate. It would be a gross misunderstanding 
of Gay to class him with those who make morality depend upon 
the arbitrary will of God. 

It will be noticed that neither Cumberland nor Gay discusses 
the possibility of the 'hedonistic calculus.' Neither of them 
seems to suspect any difficulty in the matter, and, so far as I 
am aware, this had never been distinctly raised as an objection 
to hedonism up to the time which we are considering. Perhaps 
this was to be expected, for such refinements are likely to 
belong to a later stage of ethical discussion ; but it does at first 
seem rather strange that, while Gay was the earliest consistent 
exponent of the Utilitarian principle, he did not anywhere use 
the formula, 'the greatest happiness of the greatest number.' 
Hutcheson, it will be remembered, had used this very formula, 
though it does not for him express the whole essence of mo- 
rality, as it would have done for Gay ; and Gay must have been 
familiar with Hutcheson's writings, for he controverts them 
intelligently. 

It would be quite too ingenious to suggest that Gay refrained 
from using the expression precisely because Hutcheson had 
happened to use it. He seems to have been quite willing to 
avail himself of all that he considered true in the Inquiry. The 
only importance which really can be attached to the omission 
is this : Gay and his immediate successors 1 held clearly and 
definitely to the view that, in the last resort, all human motives 
are selfish. From this standpoint, the (now accepted) formula 

1 With the exception of Hume, whose treatment of 'sympathy' is ambiguous 
in Book III of the Treatise, and who admits a certain degree of native altruism in 
the Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals. 



76 ENGLISH UTILITARIANISM. 

is by no means so inevitable as it would be, if one admitted 
the existence of disinterested sympathy and insisted that this 
latter must be present in the case of all truly moral action. 

In taking leave of this remarkable essay, we should not for- 
get that its full significance can be appreciated only after one 
has taken the trouble to trace back many of what are regarded 
as characteristic doctrines of Tucker and Paley to this their 
undoubted source. However much these authors did to fill in 
the outline, — and Tucker, at least, did a very great deal, — it 
must be granted that the whole outline of Utilitarianism, in its 
first complete and unencumbered form, is to be found in Gay's 
" Preliminary Dissertation." 



CHAPTER V. 

HUME'S ETHICAL SYSTEM. 

WE must not look for perfect continuity in the develop- 
ment of Utilitarianism, even after the doctrine had once 
been clearly enunciated. Two of the most prominent writers 
of the Utilitarian school, Tucker and Paley, were destined to 
carry out, almost to the letter, the scheme of moral theory 
which Gay had outlined in his " Preliminary Dissertation " of 
1 731; but the next writer standing for the * greatest happi- 
ness ' principle appears to owe nothing to Gay. On the con- 
trary, so far as formative influences are concerned, Hume seems 
to have taken his starting-point in Ethics from those who, like 
Shaftesbury and Hutcheson, had maintained the existence of a 

* moral sense.' 

This is by no means to say that Hume was himself a ' moral 
sense ' philosopher. Quite as much as anything else, his 
object was to show that what the ' moral sense ' writers had 
professed to explain by merely referring to a supposed < faculty,' 
could really be explained in a scientific way, according to the 
most general principles of human nature. Still, hrs primary 
contention was that morality was founded, not on * reason,' as 
he expressed it, but on ' sentiment ' ; that our starting-point 
in ethical discussions must always be the fact of our approval 
of moral actions, — a fact which could not, by any possibility, 
be explained on purely rational principles. In emphasizing 

* feeling ' at the expense of * reason,' Hume was clearly with 



j8 ENGLISH UTILITARIANISM. [Chap. 

the ' moral sense ' writers, and it is fair to assume that he was 
historically, as well as logically, related to them in this respect. 

Although Hume's writings are so much better known at 
first hand than those of Cumberland and Gay, — the only two 
of his v English predecessors who can really be said to have 
stated the Utilitarian principle, — it is more difficult than 
might be supposed to present his views on Ethics in a way to 
leave no room for misunderstanding. In the first place, one 
has to keep in mind Hume's relation to the < moral sense ' 
school, and avoid attributing either too much or too little 
importance to this relation; and, in the second place, — what 
is much more important, — one has to decide, after the most 
careful examination and comparison, whether one shall accept 
his earlier or his later treatment of Ethics as the more ade- 
quately representing his system. 

As regards Hume's relation to the ' moral sense' philosophers, 
little need be said at present. It is worth noticing, however, 
that the apparently complex character of his ethical system 
has led some to believe that its general drift is somewhat 
ambiguous, and that to the end it holds a rather close 
relation to the ' moral sense ' ethics. 1 This view is, in my 
opinion, by no means correct; but, as the mistake is a natural 
one, a comparison may prove helpful. In the case of Hutche- 
son, we found a moralist whose doctrine could hardly be 
understood without comparing it carefully with the ' greatest 
happiness ' principle. At the same time, we found that, in its 
general tendency, it was radically distinct from that principle. 
Exactly the opposite, it seems to me, is true in the case of 
Hume. While he certainly was influenced by the ' moral 
sense' writers, 'utility' is with him by no means a subsidiary 
principle, as with Hutcheson, but incontestably the basis of 
his whole ethical system. This is a dogmatic statement ; but 
its truth will, I think, become abundantly plain as we proceed 
with our examination of Hume's treatment of Ethics. 

1 See, e.g., Professor Hyslop's Elements of Ethics, p. 84 ; also, for a much more 
guarded statement, referring only to the later form of Hume's ethical theory, see 
Mr. Selby-Bigge's Introduction to his edition of Hume's Enquiries, p. xxvi. 



V.] HUME'S ETHICAL SYSTEM. 79 

The second difficulty which we noticed, that regarding the 
two forms in which Hume has left us his ethical theory, 
requires more immediate and altogether more serious atten- 
tion. It will be remembered that his first treatment of Ethics 
appeared as Book III of the Treatise of Human Nature in 
1740, the year after the publication of the other two books. 
The Inquiry concerning the Principles of Morals did not appear 
till 175 1, three years after he had published the Inquiry con- 
cerning Human Understanding, in which he had presented, in 
a more popular form, the substance of Book I of the Treatise. 
The story of Hume's chagrin at the poor reception which 
his juvenile work met with, and of his explicit repudiation of 
the Treatise in after years, as not giving his mature views on 
philosophical subjects, is too familiar to admit of repetition. 
Critics are now perfectly agreed that the Inquiry concerning 
Human Understanding, however superior in style to the first 
book of the Treatise, is an inadequate statement of the author's 
views on metaphysics; and, since one is bound to disregard 
Hume's own judgment concerning the relative merits of Book I 
of the Treatise and the corresponding Inquiry, it is natural 
that the Inquiry concerning the Principles of Morals should 
have been estimated in much the same way, in spite of the 
fact that Hume himself considered the second Inquiry as " of 
all [his] writings, historical, philosophical or literary, incom- 
parably the best." The present tendency plainly is either (1) 
to regard the two statements of his ethical theory as practically 
equivalent, and therefore to prefer Book III of the Treatise 
merely as historically prior; or (2) to hold that, in the Inquiry 
concerning the Principles of Morals, as well as in the Inquiry 
concerning Human Understanding, there is an observable fall- 
ing off in thoroughness of treatment which is by no means 
compensated for by the undoubted improvement in style. 

I cannot believe that either of these views is correct. It 
must never be forgotten that, in his later years, Hume was 
perfectly right in regarding the Treatise of Human Nature as 
a work abounding in serious defects, mainly such as betray the 
youth of the author. It is in spite of these defects that the 



80 ENGLISH UTILITARIANISM. [Chap. 

book takes its place as perhaps the most remarkable single 
work in English philosophical literature. The common state- 
ment that Book I of the Treatise is to be preferred to the 
first Inquiry because it is * more thorough ' — while perfectly 
true — might be misleading to one not equally acquainted 
with both works. A great many of the perversely subtle dis- 
cussions in the Treatise which Hume ruthlessly pruned away 
in revising it, were not only mere digressions, tending seriously 
to confuse the reader, but they were, in themselves, by no 
means uniformly convincing. To do away with many of these 
discussions was in itself a real advantage; but, unfortunately, 
Hume was not so much trying to improve the book as trying 
to make it more acceptable. The result is that, along with 
what was at once irrelevant and of doubtful validity, he omitted 
much that was really essential to the adequate statement of 
his peculiar views on metaphysics. 

One would naturally expect to find much the same thing 
true in the case of the Inquiry concerning the Principles 
of Morals. As a matter of fact, however, in spite of what is 
evidently the current view, I am strongly of the opinion that 
the Inquiry is not only a clearer, but a better statement of 
Hume's ethical theory than the third book of the Treatise. 
Here the elimination has nearly always conduced to that really 
consecutive treatment which is so important in any philosophi- 
cal work, and nothing in the least essential to the system as a 
whole seems to have been left out. Much more important for 
us, however, is the fact that, in the second Inquiry, Hume 
does away with the one exasperating ambiguity of his earlier 
work, i.e., his treatment of 'sympathy.' Other comparisons 
between the Inquiry and the corresponding book of the 
Treatise will be noted, as it becomes necessary. This, how- 
ever, is so important that we must take account of it at the 
very beginning. 

In both the Treatise and the Inquiry, — though the order of 
exposition in the two works differs otherwise, in certain 
respects, — Hume begins with the fact of moral approbation. 
He first shows — in the Treatise at considerable length; in 



V.] HUME'S ETHICAL SYSTEM. 8 1 

the Inquiry more briefly, but perhaps as convincingly — that 
moral approbation cannot ultimately be founded upon prin- 
ciples of mere reason. After thus clearing the ground, he 
attempts to explain our approbation of moral conduct by refer- 
ring, not to a supposed ' moral sense,' but to what he assumes 
to be the springs of human action and the determining effects 
of human experience. 

Now the important difference between the standpoint of 
the Treatise and that of the Inquiry, just referred to, consists 
in the radically different answers given in the two works to 
the question: What are the springs of action — the funda- 
mental tendencies of human nature ? In the Treatise, these 
are held to be (i) egoism, (2) limited altruism, and (3) 'sym- 
pathy.' The relation between them is difficult to state in a 
few words, — indeed, so far as ' sympathy ' is concerned, diffi- 
cult to state at all, — but Hume's position in the Treatise 
plainly is that human nature is essentially egoistic. As 
regards altruism, he holds distinctly that we have no particu- 
lar love for our fellow-beings as such. 1 Our limited altruism 
manifests itself only in the case of those standing to us in the 
closest relations of life, and in a way which does not permit us 
to suppose that it is an original principle of human nature, 
strictly coordinate with the self-regarding tendency. 

At this point Hume employs the rather mysterious principle 
of 'sympathy.' For him, in his earlier work, as for many of 
the later empiricists, ' sympathy ' is produced through the 
' association of ideas.' His peculiar mode of explanation is as 
follows, — the point being to show that in this case an < idea ' 
is practically converted into an ' impression.' The ' impression 
of ourselves ' is particularly vivid, and by ' association ' it hap- 
pens that a corresponding (though of course not equal) vivid- 
ness is imparted to that which relates to ourselves. But other 
human beings are similar to ourselves. This relation of 'simi- 
larity' makes us vividly conceive what concerns them, the other 
relations of ' contiguity ' and < causation ' [i.e., kinship here] 
assisting in the matter. Thus our idea of another's emotion 

1 Treatise, bk. iii, pt. ii, § i. 



82 ENGLISH UTILITARIANISM. [Chap. 

may become so vivid as to give rise to the same emotion in 
ourselves. 1 In spite of its obvious ingenuity, this explanation 
of * sympathy' hardly falls in with our present modes of 
thought. One readily sees that for Hume, as for the Asso- 
ciationist school in general, * sympathy' is left in a condition 
of unstable equilibrium, liable at a touch to be precipitated 
into egoism pure and simple. 

This aspect of Hume's system, in its earlier form, is the 
more confusing for the reason that he never seriously attempts 
to state the relation between our derived ' sympathy ' and our 
(fundamental) self -regarding tendency. The result is a degree 
of theoretical confusion that can only be appreciated by those 
who have read the Treatise with considerable care. It should 
be observed that one does not here refer to the inevitable 
ambiguity of the words ' egoism' and 'altruism,' as. ordinarily 
used, 2 but rather to the fact that Hume professes to explain — 
almost in the sense of explaining away — what we ordinarily 
understand by (general) ' sympathy,' without anywhere telling 
us exactly what he claims to have reduced it to. 

If Hume's treatment of ' sympathy ' were the same in the 
Inquiry concerning the Principles of Morals as in Book III of 
the Treatise, — which is apparently the careless assumption of 
those who regard his position in the two works as identical, — 
we should need to examine the mysterious principle consider- 
ably in detail. As a matter of fact, however, Hume seems to 
have been keenly aware that his earlier treatment of 'sym- 
pathy ' was a mistake, and a bad one ; and he gives us what he 
would probably have regarded as the best possible antidote in 
what he says on the same subject in the Inquiry? There he 
means by the word ' sympathy ' nothing essentially different 
from the general benevolent tendency, the degree of which he 
shows his good judgment in not attempting to define, but 
which he regards as the foundation of the historical develop- 
ment of morality. 

1 See Treatise, bk. ii, pt. i, § xi. 

2 This ambiguity, of course, depends upon the unwarranted abstraction made 
by those who speak as if ' egoism ' and ' altruism ' stood for two absolutely dis- 
tinct tendencies of human nature. 8 See, e.g., § v, pt. ii et seq.; also Appendix ii. 



V.] HUME'S ETHICAL SYSTEM. 8$ 

The significance of this change is not easily to be overrated. 
It does away at once with an almost indefinite amount of theo- 
retical confusion, and puts Hume on the right track just where 
his historical, but not logical, successors — Tucker, Paley, and 
Bentham — were destined to go astray. And it must not for 
a moment be supposed that Hume is here going to the other 
extreme, and contending for the existence of a perfectly differ- 
entiated ' altruism ' in our human nature, as opposed to an 
equally differentiated « egoism,' — as Hutcheson, for example, 
had mistakenly done. He rather shows that, in the last 
resort, this distinction resolves itself into an abstraction, and 
holds, in language which Butler himself would have had to 
commend: "Whatever contradiction may vulgarly be supposed 
between the selfish and social sentiments or dispositions, they 
are really no more opposite than selfish and ambitious, selfish 
and revengeful, selfish and vain." And one is almost startled 
at the agreement with Butler, when he immediately adds : " It 
is requisite that there be an original propensity of some kind, 
in order to be a basis to self-love, by giving a relish to the 
objects of its pursuit ; and none more fit for this purpose than 
benevolence or humanity." 1 

To conclude, then : in place of the three quasi-distinct (but 
by no means coordinate) principles — egoism, limited altruism, 2 
and 'sympathy' — which had been assumed in the Treatise, 
we have 'sympathy,' in the ambiguous sense first explained, 
stricken out in the Inquiry, and a human nature there assumed 
which, as Hume sometimes has occasion to show, a priori 
implies at least a certain degree of the benevolent tendency, 
alongside of the equally essential self -regarding tendency, — 
the two becoming differentiated, in so far as they do become 
differentiated at all, only in the course of human experience. 

While I am inclined to lay a great deal of stress upon this 
change of position on the part of Hume, I cannot at all agree 

1 See Inquiry, § ix, pt. ii. Butler's Sermons upon Human Nature had been 
published in 1726. 

2 Our limited altruism is mentioned here as a quasi-distinct principle, because 
it implies another kind of association, i.e., by ' causation,' besides association by 
* similiarity ' and by ' contiguity,' which are involved in our general sympathy. 



84 ENGLISH UTILITARIANISM. [Chap. 

with Mr. Selby-Bigge, when he says (in the brief, but mainly 
admirable introduction to his edition of Hume's two Inquiries) : 
" In the Enquiry [concerning the Principles of Morals'] there is 
little to distinguish his [Hume's] theory from the ordinary 
* moral sense ' theory, except perhaps a more destructive use 
of ' utility.' " 1 For, as Mr. Selby-Bigge himself points out, 
even freer use is made of the principle of 'utility' in the Inquiry 
than in the Treatise. And I cannot at all follow him when he 
adds : " It would be easy to draw consequences from this prin- 
ciple which would neutralize the concessions made to benevo- 
lence, but he [Hume] is content himself to leave it without 
development, and to say in effect that utility pleases simply 
because it does please." Why the admission of a certain 
undefined degree of native altruism and the use of the princi- 
ple of ' utility ' should be regarded as necessarily conflicting, 
I have never been able to understand. As in most discussions 
where abstract * egoism ' and abstract ' altruism ' figure, the 
supposed difficulty resolves itself into an ambiguity in the use 
of words. Even if the hedonist, in order to be consistent, is 
obliged to hold that one is always determined to act for one's 
own pleasure, 2 a point which would certainly bear debating, 
he is not therefore committed to egoism in any offensive sense. 
If one derive pleasure from the pleasure of others, one is just 
so far altruistic. Whether or not one does derive pleasure 
from the pleasure of others, is solely a question of fact; and 
the inevitable answer cannot properly be used against ' univer- 
salistic hedonism ' or any other recognized type of ethical 
theory. 

1 See p. xx vi. 

2 The expression ' determined to act for one's own pleasure ' is in itself seri- 
ously misleading. Even when we are acting with a direct view to our own future 
pleasure, it is, of course, the present pleasure attaching to the idea of our future 
pleasure, not the future pleasure itself (!), which determines our action. And to 
assume that no idea but that of our own future pleasure can attract us, manifestly 
begs the whole question. In the text, however, I have attempted to show that, 
even if the hedonist admit that, in his view, we always act for our own pleasure, 
he is not committed to ' egoism,' in the derogatory sense. — All this, of course, has 
nothing to do with the ultimate validity of hedonism, which the present writer 
would by no means admit. 



V.] HUME'S ETHICAL SYSTEM. 85 

Having thus considered, somewhat at length, this very 
important question as to the relation between the standpoint 
of Book III of the Treatise and that of the Inquiry concerning 
the Principles of Morals, as regards the springs of human 
action, we shall now proceed to an examination of Hume's 
ethical system as a whole. In order to understand his mode 
of procedure, either in the Treatise or in the Inquiry, one 
should keep in mind the distinction, explicit in the former 
work, implicit in the latter, between what he calls the ' natu- 
ral ' and the ' artificial ' virtues. For instance, in the Treatise 
Hume contends that justice is an 'artificial' virtue, while he 
regards benevolence, in its various forms, as ' natural/ 1 By 
1 artificial ' he does not mean, as he explains, that which is a 
superfluity in organized society; rather does he hold that a 
recognition of justice is basal to all social life whatever. He 
simply means that the utility which, as he is going to show, 
all virtues have in common, is indirect in the case of justice 
and other ' artificial ' virtues, while direct in the case of all the 
so-called 'natural' virtues. 2 More particularly, he means — 
what, to be sure, is not strictly true — that the effect of the 
so-called 'natural' virtues is immediately and always an in- 
crease of happiness, while, in the case of justice, etc., this is 
manifestly true only in the long run. 

This at first looks like one of the many fine distinctions 
which Hume draws in the Treatise only to practically neglect 
them in the Inquiry, and that to the manifest advantage of his 
exposition. As a matter of fact, however, the position, though 
unsound, is quite characteristic. While Hume does not directly 
speak of 'artificial' as opposed to 'natural' virtues in the 
Inquiry, he does not seem really to appreciate his mistake and 
give up the distinction altogether. In both works he is prima- 
rily concerned to show the relation of the several virtues to 

1 It will be seen that the term ■ natural,' as here applied, is rather misleading, 
since Hume does not admit native altruism in the Treatise. 

2 The other virtues beside justice which Hume designates as ' artificial ' are 
allegiance, modesty, and good manners. The 'natural' virtues specified are 
meekness, beneficence, charity, generosity, clemency, moderation, and equity (sic). 
See Treatise, bk. iii, pt. iii, § i. 



86 ENGLISH UTILITARIANISM. [Chap. 

what he recognizes as the springs of human action, the funda- 
mental impulsive tendencies of human nature. Now he holds 
with much truth that, in the case of justice, e.g., we have no 
mere native impulses which of themselves are sufficient to 
explain either the fact that we approve justice, or the fact that 
we ourselves practise this virtue. But when he comes to treat 
the so-called < natural ' virtues, he seems to assume — in the 
later as well as in the earlier work — that the virtues in ques- 
tion are, on the one hand, the direct result of our natural 
springs of action, and, on the other hand, that their effects are 
immediately and always fortunate. 

Keeping in mind, then, this distinction, which, though not 
consistently carried out, really determines in a general way 
the form of exposition in both the Treatise and the Inquiry, we 
are now prepared to notice Hume's more specific treatment of 
the problems of Ethics. As will readily be seen, it is not 
without significance that in the Treatise he considers justice 
before benevolence, while in the Inquiry he does the contrary: 
for in the Treatise he is concerned to prove, not only the gene- 
ral utilitarian character of justice, but that it is ultimately 
based on (practically) egoistic principles; while in the Inquiry 
he begins with the assumption that the measure of benevolence 
is the measure of virtue, and that benevolence is good because 
it results in the increase of human happiness. As I regard 
the position taken in the Inquiry as more consistent and more 
characteristic, for reasons sufficiently given above, I shall 
mainly follow that work rather than the Treatise, in the present 
account of Hume's proof of the utilitarian principle. 1 

Hume's treatment of benevolence in the Inquiry is very brief. 
In fact, after he had given up his peculiar view of ' sympathy/ 
as worked out in the Treatise, he probably thought that little 
remained to be said on the subject. The possibility of such a 
virtue could hardly have seemed to him to need proof, for in 
this later work he had once for all assumed a certain degree 
of altruism, as belonging to human nature; and it must be 
remembered that he did not seriously consider, or even dis- 

1 Important differences of treatment in the two works will of course be noted. 



V.] HUME'S ETHICAL SYSTEM. 8j 

tinctly recognize, the question how, given altruistic as well as 
egoistic tendencies, the developed virtue of benevolence (as 
distinguished from mere impulsive kindliness) was to be 
explained. 

Beginning, as he nearly always does, with our actual ap- 
proval of moral actions, Hume remarks that the very words 
we use to describe " the benevolent or softer affections " indi- 
cate the universal attitude toward them. He says: "The 
epithets sociable, good-natured, humane, merciful, grateful, 
friendly, generous, beneficent, or their equivalents, are known in 
all languages, and universally express the highest merit which 
human nature is capable of attaining." 1 But Hume further 
points out that, when we praise the benevolent man, there is one 
circumstance which we always insist upon, i.e., the happiness 
of others which inevitably results from his habitual mode of 
action. Indeed, as we have had occasion to note in another 
connection, Hume seems never to have given up the view, 
definitely expressed in the Treatise (a propos of the distinction 
between the 'natural' and the 'artificial' virtues), that the 
good which results from benevolence " arises from every sin- 
gle act." 2 Now since benevolence does have this universal 
tendency to make for happiness, it seems fair to assume that 
utility forms at least a part of the merit of benevolent actions. 
But the further we examine into the matter, the more utility 
is found to be an adequate explanation of our approbation of 
such actions, while other modes of explanation in a correspond- 
ing degree lose their plausibility. The practically inevitable 
presumption, then, is that utility is the sole ground of our 
approbation of benevolent actions. It remains to be seen, of 
course, whether it will prove sufficient to explain the other 
great social virtue, justice, as well as a number of self -regard- 
ing virtues which will be mentioned later. 

Before leaving this present subject of benevolence, however, 
it will be well to see how Hume's treatment of the virtue 
accords with his mature view regarding the springs of human 
action. It has been said that benevolent actions please on ac- 

1 See Inquiry, § ii, pt. i. 2 See bk. iii, pt. iii, § i. 



88 ENGLISH UTILITARIANISM. [Chap. 

• 
count of their utility, meaning by this their tendency to produce 
pleasure, either in particular individuals or in mankind at 
large. Why does utility please, even when we have no private 
interest at stake ? In Hume's earlier treatment of Ethics, it 
was just here that he had been obliged to have recourse to the 
principle of ' sympathy,' thus reducing our apparent altruism 
to terms of something very like egoism. In the present work, 
he expressly states that the selfish principle is inadequate, and 
that the use of it by philosophers to explain the phenomena 
of our moral life results from a love of fictitious simplicity. 1 
Man does have an original altruistic, as well as egoistic, ten- 
dency, the one being just as ' natural' as the other. But this 
is not all. Hume further points out that sensibility to the 
happiness and unhappiness of others and moral discrimination 
keep pace with each other. It will thus be seen that he 
makes the former, i.e., l sympathy' in its ordinary sense, the 
foundation of moral development. 

Now there is a difficulty here, already mentioned, which 
Hume quite forgets to take account of in his direct treatment 
of benevolence. How do we pass from the mere impulse to 
benevolent action, whether strong or weak, to a virtue of 
benevolence, which latter, of course, implies an objective stan- 
dard? It must be admitted that, when Hume incidentally 
tries to answer this question, somewhat later in the Inquiry, 
his account of the matter, though interesting, is hardly ade- 
quate. His view seems to be that human intercourse involves 
meeting our fellows half-way ; that language is formed, not for 
expressing that which is merely subjective, but that which 
may, in a sense, be regarded as objective. He says: "The 
intercourse of sentiments, therefore, in society and conversa- 
tion, makes us form some general, unalterable standard, by 
which we may approve or disapprove of characters and man- 
ners." 2 Here, apparently, we have the germ of Adam Smith's 
characteristic notion of the ' ideal impartial spectator.' 

After having argued that benevolence, as a virtue, is actu- 
ally approved on account of its utility, Hume proceeds to a 

1 See Inquiry, Appendix ii. 2 Ibid., § v, pt. ii. 

LOFC 



V.] HUME'S ETHICAL SYSTEM. 89 

consideration of justice. His treatment of this virtue in the 
Inquiry substantially corresponds to his previous treatment in 
the third book of the Treatise, so far as his attempt is merely 
to show its general utilitarian origin. Minor differences in 
the two expositions need not detain us, but it may be well to 
note in passing that here, as in the case of benevolence, we 
ultimately are confronted with the question as to ' why utility 
pleases,' and that the question would have to be answered 
somewhat differently in the two works, in a way to correspond 
to the different springs of action recognized. What has been 
said regarding this question in the case of benevolence will, of 
course, apply in all essential respects in the present case of 
justice. 

At the beginning of his treatment of justice, Hume properly 
enough remarks that all are so completely agreed as to the 
utility of this virtue that nothing need be said on that score. 
His object, of course, is to show, not merely that justice is 
useful, but that its character as a virtue is determined wholly 
by its usefulness. It should be noted that here, as in the third 
book of the Treatise, Hume writes of justice as if the virtue 
had a bearing only upon cases where external goods are in 
question. Later we shall find reason seriously to object to 
this view. Granting, however, for the present, that justice is 
to be taken in this restricted sense, Hume's line of argument 
is at least plausible. He says, as every one will remember, 
that justice would have no meaning if there were either (1) an 
unlimited supply of the goods in question, or (2) perfect gener- 
osity in human nature. As a matter of fact, of course, most 
external goods are limited in quantity; and here, as in the 
Treatise, Hume holds that the egoistic impulses predominate, 
although he forsakes his former position to the extent of 
admitting a certain degree of original altruism. Our natural 
tendency, then, would be in the direction of appropriating 
more than belonged to us. But, since the same tendency 
is present in all others, society can only exist in a per- 
manent form where property rights are to some extent re- 
cognized. 



90 ENGLISH UTILITARIANISM. [Chap. 

Since justice has no meaning for Hume, apart from the 
insufficient supply of external goods and the predominant self- 
ishness of man, it might seem as if he would have us look for 
a thorough-going utility in all the particular rules of justice. 
As a matter of fact, however, he suggests that we do not need 
to carry our analysis very far to see that these rules are often, in 
the last resort, more or less arbitrary. Such cases Hume attrib- 
utes to the natural processes of the ' imagination,' as deter- 
mined by the all-important principle of the ' association of 
ideas.' It must not be supposed that we really have two prin- 
ciples operating here, utility and some arbitrary principle, — 
the two standing to each other in an unknown relation. The 
^//-important thing is that principles of some sort should be 
recognized, where the ownership of property is concerned. 
Beyond a certain point, Hume would seem to say, it makes no 
very great difference how goods are apportioned, at least in 
the hypothetical first instance, — and it is there, mainly, that 
the ' imagination ' is conceived to come in as a complicating 
factor. 1 

Such, then, is Hume's actual treatment of justice reduced 
to its lowest terms. Up to this point, we have admitted his 
assumption that justice concerns only our pecuniary dealings 
with others. But is this really true ? In order not to misin- 
terpret Hume's position, we must keep in mind that he treats 
the obligation of promises in connection with justice, and as 
necessarily arising from it. But the ultimate reference is 
always to external goods, and the two complications always 
are the insufficiency of such goods and the excess of human 
egoism. It will hardly be denied that, while justice should 
always be differentiated as clearly as possible from benevo- 
lence, its scope is inevitably much greater than Hume seems 

1 It is interesting to see how English ethical writers, from the time of Hobbes 
to that of Paley, were unable to free themselves entirely from the conception of a 
' state of nature ' and a ' compact ' made when men entered into society. With 
those who accepted the doctrine, wholly or in part, we are not here concerned ; 
but it will be found that those who expressly repudiate this view {e.g., Hume and 
Paley) often lapse into a mode of speech which seems to imply it. An interesting 
case will be found in Paley's Moral and Political Philosophy, bk. Hi, pt. ii, ch. v. 



V.] HUME'S ETHICAL SYSTEM. 9 1 

prepared to admit. Let us suppose, for the moment, that 
there were an unlimited supply of the good things of life, and 
that, at the same time, human nature were as predominantly 
altruistic as it often seems to be egoistic. Even in this 
doubly millennial condition of things, it would still be abso- 
lutely necessary, in order to the very existence of society, that 
men should be able in some measure to depend upon each 
other. It is only upon the basis of some definite expectations 
that one can live with one's fellows from day to day. Even 
in the family, justice of a sort would seem to be as necessary 
as anywhere else, — a necessary foundation for enlightened 
benevolence. 

We shall now examine the remaining part of Hume's sys- 
tematic treatment of Ethics. In considering this somewhat 
briefly, we shall merely be following the author's own exam- 
ple. And first we must notice Hume's general classification 
of the virtues. In the Inquiry} as well as in the third book 
of the Treatise? he distinguishes between virtues which are 
(1) 'useful to oneself,' e.g., prudence, constancy, good judg- 
ment, etc.; (2) 'immediately agreeable to oneself,' e.g., mag- 
nanimity; (3) 'useful to others,' e.g., justice and benevolence; 
and (4) ' immediately agreeable to others,' e.g., politeness, wit, 
and cleanliness. Even a somewhat casual examination of this 
classification will reveal its artificial character. At the same 
time, before criticising Hume, it is important to see exactly 
what he means. For instance, let us take. the first class of 
virtues, those 'useful to oneself,' — prudence, constancy, etc. 
Hume does not by any means set himself the gratuitous task 
of showing that these virtues are, as a matter of fact, useful to 
oneself. The question really is: Why do I commend pru- 
dence, etc., in another ? The value to the community of 
prudence in the individual, even when exercised in his own 
affairs, is not what is here emphasized, though that would 
seem to be the most natural line of argument. Hume is 
rather concerned to show, in his later work, that it cannot be 
from motives of self-love that one commends prudence in 

1 See §§ vi, vii, viii, ix. 2 See bk. iii, pt. iii, § i (end). 



92 ENGLISH UTILITARIANISM. [Chap. 

others. Indeed, he holds that it is more clearly impossible to 
resolve moral approbation into self-love here than in the case 
of justice. In his very obscure account of this matter in the 
third book of the Treatise, Hume had seemed to hold that we 
unconsciously put ourselves in the place of the person sym- 
pathized with, and, in a sense, feel for ourselves, rather than 
strictly feel for him. On the other hand, in the Inquiry, 
which we are here following, he explicitly abandons all such 
speculations, and not only accepts, but emphasizes, the fact 
that an original altruistic tendency in human nature must be 
admitted. 

In distinguishing the virtues which are ' immediately agree- 
able' to oneself from those which are merely * useful,' Hume 
carelessly adopts a terminology which, in a writer less clear 
than himself, might lead to confusion. Pleasure is the ulti- 
mate test, of course, in one case as much as in the other, — 
the only difference being that in the second class of virtues, 
as the name would imply, the pleasure is experienced immedi- 
ately, while in the first class it results rather in the long run. 
As a matter of fact, however, when all allowances are made, 
one can hardly defend Hume in adopting a classification which 
seems to explain magnanimity as a virtue, on the ground that 
we approve it because it is immediately agreeable to its fortu- 
nate possessor ! Virtues of the third class, justice and benevo- 
lence, are perhaps naturally enough termed * useful to others,' 
though ultimately the distinction between the first two classes 
of virtues (self-regarding) and the last two classes (other- 
regarding) breaks down, even under Hume's own handling. 
The fourth class of virtues, those ' immediately agreeable to 
others,' — politeness, wit, cleanliness, — are apparently not all 
on the same plane, and further illustrate the difficulty of making 
the distinction just noted. 

In fact, this whole classification and treatment of the par- 
ticular virtues, first adopted in the Treatise, and retained 
without important revision in the Inquiry, seems out of place 
in the latter work, since there Hume once for all admits 
an original sympathetic tendency in human nature. It would 



V.] HUME'S ETHICAL SYSTEM. 93 

have been much more consistent for him to show that both 
the self-regarding and the other-regarding virtues are ulti- 
mately to be recognized as virtues because they conduce to 
the common weal, or — if we may use the phrase now so hack- 
neyed, which had already, in Hume's time, been employed by 
Hutcheson — < the greatest happiness of the greatest number.' 

Such was Hume's system, as actually worked out by him- 
self. When we come to compare it with that of Gay, — his 
only predecessor who had stated the Utilitarian principle in a 
perfectly unambiguous form, — we see at once what an impor- 
tant advance had been made in the development of ethical 
theory. Gay's system had been as frankly individualistic, in 
its way, as that of Hobbes; but, at the same time, it had 
avoided those offensive paradoxes of the earlier doctrine, which 
had undoubtedly kept many from appreciating the plausibility 
of the egoistic position. Indeed, it would be quite unfair to 
put Gay and his successors (i.e., those Utilitarian writers who 
maintained the egoistic character of the motive of the moral 
agent) in the same category with Hobbes. Gay and the others 
never employed egoism as a means by which to vilify human 
nature, but rather seem to have regarded it as a tempting 
device for simplifying ethical theory. Moreover, they partly 
succeeded in disguising its essentially unlovely character by 
supposing the development of a derived 'sympathy' through 
the ' association of ideas.' Hume had at first allowed himself 
to use 'association' in much the same way; but the very fact 
that his explanations in the Treatise are so much less clear 
than those of Gay in the " Dissertation," suggests a lack of cer- 
tainty in his own mind as to the validity of the method ; and, 
as we have seen, he entirely gave up, in his later work, this 
attempt to reduce the altruistic tendencies of human nature 
to terms of something else. 

Taken by itself, Hume's recognition and defence of original 
altruism could not be regarded as an important contribution to 
English Ethics. From the time of Cumberland to that of 
Shaftesbury and Hutcheson, there had never been wanting 



94 ENGLISH UTILITARIANISM. [Chap. 

those who, from one point of view or another, opposed the 
egoistic position of Hobbes. But of all those moralists, Cum- 
berland alone can properly be termed a Utilitarian, and even 
he, it will be remembered, had carried through ' the perfection 
of body and mind ' as a principle parallel to that of ' the great- 
est happiness of all.' Hume, then, was the first to hold the 
Utilitarian doctrine in its unmistakable form and at the same 
time to admit, and defend, the altruistic tendencies of human 
nature. 

Gay had vigorously, and more or less successfully, opposed 
the * moral sense ' theory, as held by Shaftesbury and Hutche- 
son. However, while he was greatly in advance of those 
writers in clearness and simplicity of ethical theory, he by no 
means equalled them in his grasp of the fundamental facts of 
our moral experience. Hume was as sure as Gay had been 
that we must not explain the phenomena of our moral life by 
referring them, or any part of them, to a special faculty like 
the ' moral sense ' ; but he took a much broader view of human 
nature than Gay had done, and, from first to last, attributed 
more importance to the part played by the affective side of 
our nature in the formation of moral judgments. In fact, he 
has sometimes been misjudged on account of this very catho- 
licity of treatment. As we have had occasion to note, there 
are even those who hold that he never quite departed from 
the ' moral sense ' theory. I can only regard this view as a 
serious mistake. We have seen again and again, that, while 
he always begins with the fact of moral approbation, as 
applying to a particular class of actions, it is his special 
endeavor to show how this approbation arises, according to 
the recognized principles of human nature. With all his faults 
as a philosopher and as a moralist, Hume was far too scientific, 
both in his ideals and his methods, to be guilty of any flagrant 
form of ' faculty psychology.' 

We can only speculate as to just what Hume's system might 
have become, if the author had given up his artificial and 
somewhat misleading classification of the virtues. It is fair 
to remark, however, that, if he had been more thorough in his 



V.] HUME'S ETHICAL SYSTEM. 95 

revision of the third book of the Treatise, and had definitely- 
shown, what certainly was implicit in his system, that all the 
virtues are such because they conduce to < the greatest happi- 
ness of the greatest number,' he would have stated the Utilita- 
rian principle practically in its modern form. As it was, he 
freed the doctrine from the unfortunate dogma that the motive 
of the moral agent is always, in the last resort, egoistic. This 
was a distinct advance upon Gay, which, however, was wasted 
upon Tucker, Paley, and Bentham, all of whom reproduce the 
position of the "Dissertation." Even as stated to-day, the 
1 greatest happiness ' theory does not seem likely to be accepted 
as the final word of Ethics; but it would hardly be too much 
to claim that the Inquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, 
with all its defects and shortcomings, is the classic statement 
of English Utilitarianism. 



96 ENGLISH UTILITARIANISM. 



CONCLUSION. 

We have now examined with some care all of the more 
important writings which properly belong to the " Beginnings 
of English Utilitarianism." The further history of Utilitarian- 
ism in England during the eighteenth century may fairly be 
described as a development of Gay's theory. It may at first 
seem strange that subsequent writers should not have taken 
their point of departure from Hume rather than from Gay; but 
we must remember that the general character of Gay's doctrine 
was as much in accord with the tendencies of his time as that 
of Hume was with the tendencies of a later generation. More- 
over, it quite commonly happens in the History of Philosophy 
that the simpler form of a theory is developed first, even 
though its simplicity may result from a narrow and unsatisfac- 
tory view of the field of human experience which is to be 
rationalized. 

Hartley, indeed, in the preface to his Observations on Man 
(1749), definitely states his obligations to Gay, so far, at least, 
as the theory of association is concerned; but his own some- 
what peculiar moral theory is more different from that of Gay 
than are the theories of his Utilitarian successors. As the 
first writer to construct in detail an associationist psychology, 
and to base upon this the theory of 'the greatest happiness 
of the greatest number,' Hartley has . probably received quite 
as much credit as he deserves. Bating some obvious extrava- 
gances, he may perhaps be regarded as a typical associationist 
(though he left the theory of association in a much cruder form 
than is popularly supposed); but to regard him as a typical 
Associationist-Utilitarian, as is sometimes done, is wholly un- 
warranted. Not only did he admit and defend * qualitative dis- 
tinctions ' between pleasures, but he held to the possibility of 
the development of perfect altruism (through a series of asso- 
ciative processes). Now, whatever may be the truth or false- 
hood of the two positions mentioned, considered by themselves, 



CONCLUSION. 97 

it is perfectly evident that they are not in accord with the 
prevailing tendencies of Associationist-Utilitarianism. 

The consistent development of the 'theory set forth in the 
" Preliminary Dissertation " was first taken up by Tucker in 
his eccentric and unpardonably diffuse, but in many ways 
admirable, Light of Nature (1768-77). Curiously enough, Gay 
is not mentioned by Tucker, and, since the Light of Nature 
appeared a full generation later than the " Dissertation," it is 
barely possible that Tucker's obligation was not directly to Gay; 
but the ethical theories of the two coincide in all essential 
points — except, of course, that Tucker treated in great detail 
what had been merely indicated in briefest outline by Gay. 
We have seen that there were two sides of Gay's theory, — the 
psychological and the strictly ethical side. Avoiding nearly all 
of Hartley's more serious mistakes, Tucker gives to the theory 
of the " Preliminary Dissertation" a symmetrical development 
in both directions. The psychological side of his treatise repre- 
sents an almost startling advance upon Hartley's treatment of 
association, while Tucker, unlike Hartley, seems never to have 
been in doubt as to the essential logic of the Associationist-Utili- 
tarian position. Basing upon the original egoism of human 
nature, — which, of course, must not be confused with the ego- 
ism of Hobbes, since it was connected with a view of man as 
originally social rather than anti-social in his tendencies, — he 
saw, as clearly as Gay had done, that complete obligation, from 
that point of view, must rest upon a doctrine of future rewards 
and punishments. 

Paley, the typical exponent of * theological Utilitarianism,' 
was by no means the originator of anything really new in ethi- 
cal theory. In a well-known passage in the preface to his 
Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy (1785), he acknowl- 
edges quite fully his obligations to Tucker. For some reason, 
however, he, too, fails to express his obligations to Gay, though 
in his case they are perfectly evident ; and it would be absurd 
to hold that Paley was not acquainted with the " Dissertation," 
since this was always prefixed to a much-read translation of 
King's Origin of Evil, by the Rev. Edmund Law, afterwards 



98 ENGLISH UTILITARIANISM. 

Bishop of Carlisle and Paley' s own patron. Indeed, Paley 
follows the line of argument of the " Dissertation " step by step, 
almost quoting at times, just as he appropriates whatever he 
finds available in the Light of Nature. It was, however, a most 
important contribution to our ethical literature to state the 
doctrine of so-called ' theological Utilitarianism ' in such clear, 
vigorous style and in such an unmistakable form. In truth, 
a less degree of what one is tempted to call brutal frankness 
on the part of Paley would have cost our ethical literature a 
classic. 

Bentham is commonly held to represent a distinct advance 
upon Paley, on the ground that he gives a ' non-theological ' as 
opposed to a ' theological ' treatment of Ethics. It is impor- 
tant to observe, however, that the terms ' theological ' and 
< non-theological,' as ordinarily used in this connection, are apt 
to be seriously misleading. Whether or not any ethical theory 
can escape the theological reference altogether, is a most seri- 
ous question, regarding which perfectly competent critics agree 
to differ even at the present day. In ethical discussions the 
term * theological ' can with strict propriety be applied to a 
moralist only when, like Locke, he ultimately rests morality 
upon the arbitrary will of God. Whenever a writer does this, 
he must be excluded from the history of Ethics as a science, 
because by denying the ultimate rationality of any ethical prin- 
ciples he implicitly denies the possibility of Ethics itself. Gay, 
to be sure, might seem to the careless reader to begin his 
ethical speculations in the same way, since he makes all 
morality depend immediately upon 'the will of God.' But, 
though the 'criterion' of morality is 'the will of God,' the 
' criterion ' of ' the will of God ' is the greatest happiness of 
mankind. In other words, God wills the greatest happiness of 
all human beings because that is the end which is ultimately 
of supreme moral worth. Gay, then, had a definite ' criterion ' 
of morality — as definite as that of any other ethical writer — 
but, since he began with the assumption of our original egoism 
and held that obligation is merely " the necessity of doing or 
omitting any action in order to be happy," he was, of course, 



CONCLUSION. 99 

unable to prove our complete moral obligation without referring 
to the theological doctrine of rewards and punishments. In 
this respect, as we have seen, both Tucker and Paley followed 
exactly in the path which Gay had pointed out. 

Now, it might seem as if Bentham were to be put in a differ- 
ent category altogether from the so-called 'theological' moralists, 
because he does not make this appeal to theological doctrine. 
As a matter of fact, however, he evades rather than overcomes 
the difficulty. Although he recognizes no other obligation 
than one's ultimate self-interest, either in the Introduction to 
the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789) or in the Deon- 
tology (published posthumously in 1834), he nowhere makes 
any serious attempt to prove that public and private interest 
in all cases necessarily coincide — an attempt which, indeed, 
would be predoomed to failure if one were to leave out all 
considerations of a future life, as Bentham felt bound to do. 
So far as ethical theory is concerned, Bentham differed from his 
Utilitarian predecessors in two points only: (1) he seemed to 
hold that we must compute the probable consequences of our 
actions in the individual case and act accordingly, rather than 
depend upon general principles of utility, as the others had 
taught; (2) he introduced certain refinements into the termi- 
nology of the hedonistic calculus which have obtained consid- 
erable currency. 

In so far as Bentham seriously meant that in moral action 
we were to depend upon our computation of consequences in 
the individual case, he was evidently wrong just where his 
predecessors had apparently by forethought avoided such error; 
for they suggest — what, indeed, is manifestly true — that in 
particular moral exigencies we have no time for such computa- 
tions, and, moreover, that where our own interests are impor- 
tantly concerned we are in no proper frame of mind to work 
out problems in ' moral arithmetic' As regards the second 
point, the refinements which Bentham introduced into the 
terminology of the hedonistic calculus, it will readily be seen 
that the terms 'intensity,' 'duration,' 'certainty,' 'proximity,' 
'extent,' 'fecundity' and 'barrenness,' 'purity' and 'impurity,' 



IOO ENGLISH UTILITARIANISM. 

all except the first four used in a highly technical sense, were 
no more than convenient names for distinctions already recog- 
nized. In the last resort the hedonistic calculus reduces itself 
to terms of 'intensity,' 'duration,' and 'extent' (the latter 
term referring to the number of individuals concerned). ' Cer- 
tainty ' and ' proximity ' refer only to the probability or improb- 
ability of our experiencing given pleasures or pains, — a 
consideration which, of course, no one could possibly overlook. 
There remain the distinctions 'fruitful' or 'barren,' 'pure' or 
' impure,' as applied to both pleasures and pains. Bentham 
uses these terms somewhat differently in the Principles of 
Morals and Legislation and in the Deontology. In the Princi- 
ples ', ' fecundity ' and ' purity ' both refer to the future. Given 
a pleasure or pain, we call it ' fruitful ' if it is likely to be fol- 
lowed by other affections of the same kind, ' pure ' if it is not 
likely to be followed by other affections of the opposite kind. 
In the Deontology, on the other hand, the fruitfulness or 
barrenness of a particular pleasure or pain is regarded as its 
productiveness of future affections, whether of the same or of 
the opposite kind, or of both. ' Purity ' and ' impurity,' on 
the contrary, apparently refer merely to the unmixed or the 
mixed character of our present affections; i.e., pleasure or 
pain without, or with, its opposite. Whether Bentham commits 
himself to the dubious position that we have states of con- 
sciousness which are at the same time pleasurable and painful, 
we do not here need to inquire. It will readily be seen that 
these latter distinctions, like the former ones, are pretty obvi- 
ous, and that Bentham contributed the terminology merely. In 
all this, of course, it must be understood that we are consider- 
ing Bentham from the point of view of the History of Ethics; 
and it must be sufficiently clear that he contributed nothing 
really new to Ethics, considered strictly as such. On the other 
hand, there is no doubt whatever that Bentham was a very 
potent influence in bringing the Utilitarian doctrine to the 
attention of his contemporaries, not merely as a type of ethical 
theory, but as the theoretical foundation of certain schemes of 
practical reform. 



CONCLUSION. IOI 

With Bentham, the older Utilitarianism may be said to have 
come to an end. James Mill, who was a contemporary of 
Bentham, was an advocate of much the same theoretical and 
practical principles; but he is a good deal less important for 
Ethics than for Psychology, and so does not call for any special 
mention here. In the hands of J. S. Mill, however, the Utili- 
tarian doctrine took on a very different character. More even 
than he probably realized, he had broken with the traditions of 
eighteenth-century Utilitarianism. Like Hume, Mill saw the 
necessity of recognizing the existence of original altruism ; but, 
unlike Hume, he followed Hutcheson in recognizing 'qualita- 
tive differences ' between pleasures. The inconsistency of the 
last-named position with the general doctrine of hedonism is 
now universally acknowledged; but since the time of Mill 
there has been a strong and increasing tendency on the part 
of Utilitarians to concede a good deal to the native altruism of 
man, or, rather, perhaps, to show (what, indeed, ought to be 
plainly evident) that egoism and altruism to a very large extent 
coincide in the case of any truly social being. 

But this is not all that J. S. Mill stands for in the history of 
English Ethics. Critics have dwelt altogether too much upon 
certain inconsistencies in his doctrine, and have generally 
failed to do anything like justice to the honesty and broad- 
mindedness that made him take serious account of the very 
facts of our moral experience which afforded the most serious 
difficulties to his own ethical theory. Just because of this fair- 
mindedness, this willingness to do justice to our moral nature 
as a whole — not because of his inconsistencies, as some would 
hold — Mill belongs, not merely to the Utilitarians, but to 
those who have found the Utilitarian doctrine insufficient, and 
have attempted to pass beyond it while doing full justice to 
the measure of truth which it contains. 



